AuburnAlehouse

Monday morning started fairly early around 3am Ireland time. A couple of Jackholes decided to go out in the courtyard for a smoke (apparently Europeans haven’t read the Surgeon General’s Report) and have a Bull-Horn loud conversation. We both woke up and in our best Irish dialect said “oh what the foak?” After a quick call to the front desk, we were back to light slumber when a euro/disco nightclub sounding car alarm  began to wail. The Mrs. says ” if you make a girl some coffee, I’ll get up”.  COFFEE  IT WAS!  Thanks to Gwenda I have a state of the art traveling coffee press that works perfectly in a pro-tea society like Ireland. I think it was either Rush or Linda who told me that if I couldn’t switch to tea….better bring some coffee with!  Great advice, and I did!

We spent the early morning posting to the blog, drinking coffee and walking around Killkenny waiting for something to open. What a cool little town. The stone architecture and tiny three step across cobble streets are just what you would expect. We ate breakfast at a little place called Mug Shots and then walked up to the Killkenny Castle for the deluxe tour. We were early, and it was about 15 degrees F out so we snuck into the Medieval  room for some shelter until the doors were unlocked.

The exterior of the Castle was spectacular and we couldn’t wait to get inside to see how the 16th Century Earls lived. We were a bit disappointed to find the County of Kilkenny had completed “refurbishing” in the late 1960’s including plaster and brightly colored paint on the interior walls and closed shades on all the windows in order to achieve “museum” status.  Our first thought was with regard to the Old Town Business Association in hopes they would reconsider this kind of misguided restoration to Old Town Auburn .  We then remembered we were on vacation and headed south to County Cork.

The drive to Cork was uneventful (in that I hadn’t run over any pedestrians or caused any harm to unsuspecting motorists) yet beautiful. We arrived in Cork around 2:30 and began looking for a suitable hotel/ B&B. Cork is quite a bit larger than we had expected and we drove around for an hour trying to get our bearings, you see, you don’t just pull it over and have a go at the map, there is no where to park!  We found a hotel and set off to discover the sites and some food!

More Later………….