August 30 – Kilkenny

Although we are staying in accommodations that serve breakfast, our meal is set up in our room the previous day. This can be good for both the hosts and the guests. The hosts don’t have to be serving all of the guests for the good portion of the morning. The guests can eat whenever they want. The only thing missing is the interaction of the guests. We will get that later on our tour.

We decided to take a rest day today and tour Kilkenny. The first stop was the book store where we bought details maps of Ireland. With our disabled GPS and our barely sufficient maps, we decided that we needed and better way to navigate.

Our next stop was the Kilkenny Castle. We paid our admission fee (it’s reduced for seniors) and did the self-guided tour. The castle is being restored by the Office of Public Works. There are docents in each room to describe them. We got in the middle of a large LDS tour group and had many lectures about the background of each room. After our tour was over, we sat in the old castle kitchen which now is a cafe and had coffee, tea and scones.

We left the tour, walked through a crafts center, went through the historic Butler House and stopped in our hotel room. After that we walked down the street across John’s Bridge and had lunch in La Trattoria, the best Italian restaurant in Kilkenny. Being a slow lunch time, the owner was acting as chef and waiter. Our plan was to have a large lunch and a small dinner. This was a large lunch. Lots of pasta.

To work off some of the pasta, we did a city walk up High Street past the Rothe House and the Smithwick Brewery and ended up at St Canice’s Cathedral. After its self-guided tour, we turned back and walked past the Black Abbey and stopped briefly at St Mary's Cathedral.

I was finished for the afternoon so we walked back to our room.

After resting for a couple of hours, it was time to go to Dylan’s for a pint. This is a whisky bar newly designed to look like an old-style pub. I had a local IPA which was OK but not up to my standards of my favorites at home.

After Dylan, we walked over to Kytelers Inn for some traditional Irish ale and some food accompanied by live Irish music. We sat at a table in old leather arm chairs and joined the packed house listening to good music.

Back at our room, it’s closing in on 10:00. Time for bed.