Journal 3.1

Dunbrody Abbey

Journal 3a

On Friday morning we packed up, had our Irish breakfast and headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car, courtesy of our friendly Irish taxi driver, Tom.

We figured that Americans had previously rented this car as the passenger side was already all scraped up! It was my assignment to do all the driving on this trip, so off we took on our way south headed to Powerscourt Gardens where Zara filmed her calendar. We arrived with nary a scratch, parked and spent a couple of hours walking there beautiful gardens. I feel like I could spend hours just writing about this beautiful place, but it just wouldn't do it justice. You could spend a whole day here, but we had more to see this day and continued south to Glendalough monastery. This is the ruins of St. Kevin's monastery and cemetery. And the views here are also incredible. With no idea as to how long it would take we then headed off to Wexford and our first B&B. I have been to both these places before, but each visit brings new discoveries and the appreciation of how this country honors the beauty of both old and ancient.

Gotta love how some of these towns are set up. No street signs and lots of narrow one way streets. After a couple of trips around a few blocks we finally located our place, dragged our bags upstairs and headed out. I was pretty surprised with some of the towns we stayed in and Wexford was no different. Some of the towns are very geared to tourism, and some are mostly working towns where after 5PM everyone goes home and it's pretty quiet. We were just getting our feet wet with understanding all this, and still a little hesitant to go wandering too much, so we found a pretty nice restaurant, The Yard, had a wonderful dinner, and walked down to the quay(key), to soak up the beautiful area. Wexford is one of the ports where ferries travel back and forth to Great Britain. And while this was a Friday night, it was pretty quiet. And later I realized that since it stays light for so long in the summer, most activity doesn't happen until around 9:00. With dinner at 8:00.

The next morning we headed out of town continuing south to Hook Head Lighthouse. We would have stopped at Kilkenney, or Waterford, but opted for this great peninsula drive on this incredible day. Waterford showroom is closed down for now, so no visits there. Kilkenney and it's surrounding area, like Bennet's Bridge, or Jerpoint Abbey, could have taken another couple of days, but I'd already been there. Hook Head Lighthouse is the oldest continually operating lighthouse in the world. Be aware though, this is quite a drive and will take almost half a day.

Leaving Hook Head and on our way heading to Kinsale, we happened along the Dunbrody Abbey (pictured above). Amazing place still being restored, but you can walk around it. Stopped for some lunch and pictures and headed on. While plans to get places are all good and fine. You will find that it always takes longer than you planned.

I had wanted to get to Charles Fort for 3 trips now and we were running late. So we scrapped the visit to Middleton Distillery (save that for next trip) and went straight to this unusual star fort built by the English to protect the harbour at Kinsale. Wished we could have also spent time in the town of Kinsale (again, next trip) but forged ahead to Kenmare on the edge of the Ring of Kerry.

So now it is Saturday night and since this is another small town there is little going on this evening. Or, once again, it might have been too early. The one pub that seemed to be busy was full of very young people with rock music, not the trad music we were hoping for. I knew we will find it when we arrive in Dingle tomorrow.