Kilkenny
Monday morning, my friends Ali, Erin, and I wanted to get out of the city and see a more rural part of the beautiful Ireland. So, we headed for Heuston station and approached the lady at the ticket counter.
"Where are you traveling to?" she inquired.
"Well, we were hoping you could tell us." She looked back at us inquisitively. We explained: "You see, we want to take a day trip somewhere that’s not too far away, where we can see some nice scenery, and where there’s a castle! So…where should we go?”
Although a worker in the travel industry, she evidently doesn’t do much traveling herself, as she had to consult a co-worker in order to provide us with an appropriate destination. After returning from the back, she hit a few buttons on her computer, printed three tickets, and handed them to us. We glanced at them and learned that we were headed for Kilkenny, wherever that was!
And so we embarked on our adventure to this little Irish town a 1.5 hour train ride south of Dublin. On the ride, we passed a lot of rolling hills, green farm land, cows, sheep, more cows, and more sheep. The sun even peaked out a little from behind the cloudy sky, lighting up the brilliant green countryside.
Once we arrived in town, we did some shopping, looking for cute local Irish gifts (like Irish wool items and handmade soaps), although there was limited selection of open shops because it was a “bank holiday” in Ireland (whatever that means), and therefore a lot of places were closed for the day. But, we wondered through the town, hot chocolates in hand (our trick for keeping warm), got a little lost, and found shop cute shops. We also stopped in at a couple of churches we found there, using our theology class knowledge to analyze the architecture and art, haha; Dr. Dawson would have been proud.
We then decided to try to find something to eat, as it was approaching the end of the lunch hour. It was then that we had an interesting little incident. Although we were in Ireland, where the whole language barrier should be nonexistent, we somehow managed to have difficulties communicating at one pub.
This is what happened: as we walked from pub to pub, reading menus to find something that appealed to all of us, we found one that looked decent, but we needed to clarify if the lasagna had tomatoes in it (because of an unfortunate food allergy I have). So, we entered the dimly lit pub, signaled the waitress passing by the door, and asked “Excuse me, but does the vegetarian lasagna have tomatoes in it?”
The woman stared back at us like we had four heads, without a response.
So Ali repeated more slowly, “Does the lasagna have tomatoes in it?”
“Uhh…lasagna, yes we…have.. lasagna.”
“Right, but does it have tomatoes in it?”
“Vegetarian lasagna?” She said, but still looked really unsure of what we were asking.
“Tomatoes? Tomatoes in it?” We inquired once again. Tomatoes IS the word they use in Ireland, right??
Again, a blank stare. At this point, we figured she wasn’t Irish and English wasn’t her first language. We almost attempted to try Italian with her, but decided to give up.
“Whatever; let’s just get out of here,” Ali decided.
We just turned around and hurried out of the place, confused about what had just happened. We brushed it off, though, and continued looking for somewhere to eat, eager to escape the cold.
Finally we found a cute pub/ restaurant, with some interesting gourmet sounding dishes. After we finished our meals, we tried some homemade scones for dessert, which were absolutely delicious! They came complete with clotted cream and jam, and were fresh out of the oven! That was one of my goals of food to try in Ireland, so I’m glad we made it happen.
We then proceeded to the castle in order to catch the last tour of the day. When we arrived, however, we discovered that the tour was already full! We were a bit upset, but accepted our luck, or lack thereof. There was a free art gallery in one part of the castle, so we went to that briefly, and then wandered outside. We walked around the beautiful green grounds of the castle (not ON the grounds though, because that was forbidden—which is probably how they keep them so green), through the paths by the river, which was gorgeous. I took a lot of pictures of the castle and the grounds, so be sure to check them out to see what it was like in Kilkenny. Cheers for now!
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