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Saturday 11 April 2015

Ireland part 4, The Finale

Our last few days in Ireland were spent in and around County Cork. We visited Cobh which is the last place the titanic took on passengers before its fateful voyage. We visited the Titanic Experience
 
 
Cobh
Picturesque little town, we took our lunch at the Titanic Bar and Grill restaurant under the White Star Line building. The food was A-mazing, and we tried an interesting lemonade that was brown in colour.

Titanic Passengers waiting to be ferried out of the Harbour
 
White Star line building today, we stood on the same balcony!
We stayed at an amazing B&B in Blarney and travelled around the area visiting lots of attractions most notably Blarney castle where we managed to climb to the top and kiss the Blarney Stone. The headless image below is me actually doing the deed. I am grateful for the grating under the stone, I could imaging one could accidentally slide right through the gap to a squashy fate without them.
 
I kissed the Blarney Stone

Blarney Castle Estate
W and my Hubby also got to visit the Cork University Hospital to have W's permanent cast put on his broken wrist. I think I forgot to mention that two days before we left Australia my son broke his wrist at school. While they did that the rest of the group went to the English Market in Cork.

We left Ireland from Cork, but my folks continued to travel around to Northern Ireland before arriving back to Dublin.

Where did we go next? The Netherlands! More on that next time.

Saturday 4 April 2015

Ireland part 3

We hired a car and travelled from Dublin to Cork.

My favourite place in Ireland that I visited... it is hard to say but, I really loved Kilkenny. I could see myself living in a place like that! All the streets are full of blooming floral baskets and the buildings are ancient and gorgeous, it really is such a pretty town set by the lovely River Nore. Kilkenny Castle is an imposing building but lovely and grand too. The grounds are quite huge to walk around. We didn't go inside, instead we took a ride on the Castle Tram around town and took afternoon tea at the Design Centre cafe.

Kilkenny Castle
We ate dinner in the red building on the left side of the picture. It is called Matt the Millers and the food was amazing! While we ate we watched them resurface the bridge, what would have taken weeks back home was done unbelievably overnight. They also had a live band playing real Irish music. Irish singing always have such a good fun vibe, how can you not have a good time when you hear it. It was magic.

We had a pub lunch at Syd Harkins where we enjoyed the most delicious Soda Bread ever. The publican was very kind and gave us lots of local info.

We also got in a bit of shopping at Dunnes Department store and Mr W's highlight was the massively huge ice-cream cone he got at Kitty's Cabin lolly shop

Ah Kilkenny I love you!