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Shouting into the Storm
Rantings, ramblings, observations and musings from the insipid to the sublime
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Kilkenney - Day 3
Friday, May 12, 2006 :::
The trip continues to be a success, despite our honest efforts to the contrary.
Today was my first real attempt at driving in Ireland. The left-side-of-the-road thing was a breeze. The traffic was not. Shouldn't be much of a surprise. Dublin is a big, modern city, with big, modern traffic. At one point, it took us 20 minutes to get off of the ramp from a major highway. Once we were cleared of Dublin and it's immediate suburbs, things got much easier.
Roads here are labeled as either M, N, or R. Speed limit goes 120 kph, 100 kph and 80 kph. Going through towns, it's usually 50-60 kph.
After a somewhat arduous two hours, we arrived at the BnB. I was tired, hot, hungry, and tired of being in our tiny little car. And when I say tiny, I'm screwing around - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Atos What we find, instead, is a note saying "To check in, call 123-456-7890" Since we do not have cell phones, this is useless information. Instead, we jot down the number, get back into the car, and drive into downtown Kilkenney. It's a miracle the trip survived.
We didn't have a map, so finding our way around took some guess work. As is customary on a Chris and Marissa trip, all of our guesses were wrong. We made a complete loop around town completely by accident. By some force unknown to me, we ended up on main street. Streets in town are roughly 4 feet wide, and it's two lanes of cars. To say I was a bit frazzled at this point is an understatement.
The benefactor of all this was the first parking garage we found, and a rather lacklust pizza joint. At least we had some food, and a vague sense of where we were. And where was that? Well, only a 5 minute walk from Kilkenny Castle (http://www.kilkenny.ie/hist/castle.html). The tour was quite good, and it was enjoyable to hear more of the checkered history between the English and the Irish. The grounds of the place are enormous. After the castle, we just sort of wandered the streets of the city. Quite by accident we ran into all of the To Do tourist places. One of the cathedrals dates back to the 5th century. Now that's old.
Finally called the BnB to straighten things out, grabbed dinner at a newish pub, and headed out with a plan on having a quite, early evening.
An hour after checking in, Marissa suggests checking out the bar at the hotel 200 meters from our BnB. Hmm, sure, why not. The owner of the BnB recommends the pub next door, which is where we end up. And we finally, at long last, find our first real Irish pub. Complete with Resident Drunks, who were thrilled we were newlyweds. The only two things we could understand was "Where are the babies comin?" and "Do you like the bar? It's a piece of shit". Well then.
One last observation - we must be on the western edge of the time zone. It's daylight here until almost 10 pm.
::: posted by Chris at 1:11 PM
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