It’s been a while, but I have been doing things! I visited a bunch of smaller towns recently. It was a bit strange comparing those towns to Dublin. First off, I dropped by Kilkenny. They have a castle!
It wasn’t as cool as Blarney, though. I prefer castles that are falling apart and dangerous to walk around in. This castle is good if your idea of a castle is closer to Versailles They have redone it in the Victorian style and it has lovely wallpaper. Wallpaper is a big deal, I have learned.
There was a nice walk along the river leading up to the castle, and I stopped to read the inscription on a stone commemorating the casualties of war.
There is the inscription in English and in Irish.
And here is Kilkenny itself!
Finally, I’m sorry but I had to do it; my brother and I spent a summer watching South Park.
Next, we took a class trip to Drocheda, which is beautiful. It’s especially lovely if you have a guide. One of our professors grew up in Drocheda and he gave us a guided tour of the city!
We dropped by a graveyard (I never went to graveyards before I came to Ireland and now I can’t seem to stop peering in). There was an interesting sculpture inset in one of the walls.
According to a guidebook our professor pulled out, the statues are of a drowned woman and one of her lovers. The sculptor chose to depict them, not as they were in life, but instead as they were found after they had died. A very unusual choice.
It turns out Drocheda was burned to the ground by Oliver Cromwell on his rampage through Ireland. He is not a very popular Oliver. There is a popular Oliver however, and that is Saint Oliver Plunkett. They even have his head on display in a church!
Yes, that is his actual head.
Finally, we took a nice hike up a hill and got a spectacular view of the whole city.
What amazed me the most about Drocheda was the fact that it contains so much history. All of the little towns around Ireland have something significant connected with them, I’m sure. This is an ancient country, built on myth and legend and sustained by stories, and that is a fact that keeps shocking me. The United States are so young by comparison! Despite the fact that there was a culture thriving in America before Europeans arrived, we have nowhere near the stories that Ireland has.
Buuuut Ireland also has a county called Dingle.
I laughed all weekend about that one.
We took a bus to Killarney and took a pony trap through the Gap of Dunloe.
Dandy is in almost all of my pictures, that lucky little horse. The views were spectacular. I have far too many photos of the amazing landscapes. The countryside was constantly shifting, too. There are pieces that look like deserts and other parts that look like the lush, green countryside you would expect from Ireland.
We also took a cheerful run around a beach! With actual sand instead of just rocks!
All in all, I took some truly amazing trips these past two weeks. These are kind of remote, out-of-the-way areas. It was a five-hour bus ride out to Dingle through some of the most glorious farmlands I have ever seen. The ocean was tucked on our left side, the hills on our right, and there were sheep everywhere. I feel like I got to see a side of Ireland that tourists are always searching for but may not be able to find. There is a lot of space contained in this small island.