Back from Ireland

Our last trip around Ireland before returning to Washington DC was to a little town called Kilkenny. We took a train to get there since the thought of renting a car was really stressing me out, with driving on the wrong side of the road being the norm in that country. I think that was the best way to see the countryside anyway since neither one of us had to do anything but sit and look out the window. The purpose of this trip was to visit Kilkenny Castle, which dated back to the 12th century. It was a cool thing to see and we took the tour but it was self guided and we would have preferred to have taken a guided one. They had offered guided tours here recently but discontinued them maybe as a cost cutting thing, I'm not sure. Anyway, the castle had been renovated and the decor was 19th century which was not as old as I would have liked it, but very interesting nevertheless.

We didn't have much time to walk about as they say there, but we had to walk from the train depot to the castle so the next picture is what one of the streets looks like and some signage.

There was this cool oak tree on the castle grounds so I had to take a picture of it. It's obviously very old but maybe in the hundreds of years and not as old as the castle itself. It had a label on it that said it was an "evergreen oak." I never heard of one of those before, maybe idigenous to Ireland.

We also had a family day and went down to the local fish pond and did a little fishing. The goal was to take little Krishna fishing but I ended up doing the fishing since Krishna found other things to do. We had to rent the gear and bait which was maggots. It was about 12 euro for that, and the rules were that you had to release any fish you caught. Unfortunately both times my bobber went down I had the pole laying on the ground... wouldn't you know it. There were many types of fish in that pond, some I recognized, some I didn't. The guy said there were brim and carp, so the brim was what I was after. I did see a few big carp but they weren't biting maggots that day. Still it was a nice family day and the sun was out.

So now we are back in the states after getting back to DC yesterday. It was a grand trip and quite an experience and we had a great time with Edie and her family.

I posted a bunch of our pictures in my web album, if you want to see any of them, go to this link. http://picasaweb.google.com/lvfire68/Ireland#

Sightseeing in Ireland

We took the train out to a place called Howth, which is near Dublin. Since we wanted to see the ocean, and Howth is surrounded by water being located on a penninsula, we chose that destination after it was recommended by Edie. It turned out to be a wonderful choice and just the kind of scenery we wanted to see.

That first picture is looking back at the town after starting on the trail along the cliffs. It was a lovely day, nice and warm and both of us were over dressed. We ate lunch at a little cafe near the train station and it was quite pricey, costing 29 euro which converts to about $45. The exchange rate changes daily but it has gone up since we have been here and since we have been using plastic to pay for most things, the costs are also changing daily. I was a little surprised that one place we went to asked if we wanted to pay in euros or dollars, so we had a choice. I'm not talking about paper money, it was a card purchase.

The last picture here is one I took in the train station. If you look on the right side of the picture you'll see the bathroom sign, "WC" which we found to be very different from the states. Most of the public bathrooms are identified as "toilets." We even found one that charged us 20 cents to use it, having a guy at the door who took the money. Karen had to take a picture of that and got one of the guy and the sign. You should have seen the looks of the people coming out as she was taking those pictures.

So it was a wonderful day out exploring and walking along the ocean side of the Irish Sea.