Bunratty Castle

After we left Ennis we made our way to Bunratty Castle, a huge tourist attraction in the town of Bunratty. They have a folk park set up with 19th century cottages. It was quite large and we actually didn't get through all of it as we were trying to make our way to Limerick afterwards.

Ireland 2007--Bunratty Castle

The castle itself was impressive for the work that's been done in restoring it. It was the most interesting for various rooms. After we left the castle, I looked at a map again and realized I'd missed a few rooms, although I was sure I'd gone through all for towers and the staircases, but it was a maze, probably done on purpose in case it was besieged.

Bunratty had their own mead but we didn't have time to stop at the meadery. Next time I'd alot more time to see this and the rest of the village. Some of the cottages has various wares to sell in them, whether food or woolens or other souvenir items.

Ennis

Ireland 2007--Ennis

Ennis is in the southwest of Ireland and we stayed the night after our long drive through the Burren. We found a little B&B a little farther out of the town center. All the Irish towns have the oldest buildings at the center and the newer more moderns ones the farther out you go. Rose cottage wasn't a cottage but had a small dining area as well as a pub downstairs and quite lovely and clean rooms upstairs. The food seemed kind of Americanized so we went into town and found one of few restaurants open. The food was extremely good, one of those higher end restaurants. Olddly I don't seem to remember the name of any of the places we ate.

After dinner my sister and I wandered up the street to a cute little pub. There were people playing inside but as opposed to an organized band they were more just jamming. A fiddler or two, I think one on bodhran but it was very low key and background. I don't even remember much about that pub.

The next day we wandered about the town which still has many medieval buildings. I think it was my favourite town for the looks and being just a pretty place. There were many interesting shops and I wouldn't have minded more time there. We found our way to the Ennis Friary by asking the Garda since we somehow couldn't find a street that went through and it turns out there is the old one, the ruins, and the new one which is still in use.

I believe this was the beginning of our second week. No on Thursday Oct. 4. The pictures all have captions that pretty much says the rest so I'll stop here except for saying when I go back I'm going to spend more time in this town.

Dysert O'Dea

We accidentally found Dysert O'Dea (pronounced O'Day), which was good as it was in the guidebook as having this wonderful doorway. But it was at the end of the day and Oct. so as we drove up to this rather small castle, we knew it was closed. There was a guy sitting in a Hummer like truck parked at the front of the castle. He was nice enough to move out of the way so we could take pictures.

Then he tolds us where the high cross and church were that we might very well have missed if we'd driven out. We did drive to a cattle gate and pulled to the side of the road. This was a real farm road so in some ways it was much bigger.

Ireland 2007--Dysert O'Dea

The castle was newer than the church which was newer than St. Tola's high cross and the ruins of the tower, which were from the 12th century. The cross holds an carving of Christ and of a bishop (St. Tola) who founded the monastery centuries before, I believe.The doorway was in good shape and very cool with all the faces. Each one was different and some human, others animals.

I'm not sure if we were in the Burren anymore or just out of it but there was such a distortion of time for us looking at the maps. A map of all of BC and a map of Ireland are the same size on paper. But a one-inch distance on a BC map could be 2 hours of driving, whereas on the Irish map it's probably 15 minutes.

Which means we managed to go from Carrowmore in the rainy morning, to Dunguaire, Kinvara, Ailwee Caves, Poulnabrone Burren, Carran Church, Dysert O'Dea castle and church all in one day. We were getting into the very tail of the day. We rarely stopped for lunch. After Dysert O'Dea we drove to the town of Ennis and found a place for the evening.