Ireland Trip - Day Two

Luckily, when I woke up on Monday morning, I didn't feel too bad, so I figured I probably wasn't actually sick. We had a busy day in front of us, so we quickly showered and headed out the door to find us some breakfast. Unfortunately, that sounds easier than it was. There weren't any diners, cafes, or anything like a Denny's or IHOP. Not even a Starbucks, which was a total surprise to me. We finally came across a crepe place called Lemon, which worked out just fine. I love crepes and will pretty much have one whenever I pass by a crepe place. It's like a rule for me - See a crepe place, eat a crepe. Anyway, this place was pretty cute.






























I thought my coffee looked so cute with the little heart in the foam and I loved the little chocolate it came with and the packaging of the sugar. I am a sucker for packaging.















I was feeling super hungry so I had an egg combo with bacon and toast AND a traditional crepe of butter, sugar and lemon juice. Max had a fancy savory crepe that had eggs, cheese, and bacon. Yum!

After breakfast, we walked over to Trinity College, where the Book of Kells is on display. I've inserted links from wikipedia, but basically it's four gospels written by Irish monks some time around 800 AD. Quite beautiful and intricately illustrated. The campus of Trinity College is just so gorgeous and the museum/tour was pretty informative. The drawbacks were that only a few pages of the book were displayed, since they can't very well tear it apart and show each page separately, and that you couldn't take photos. Afterwards, we went to the Long Hall Library, which was amazing looking. It was the inspiration behind the great hall in the Harry Potter movies and had these super high arches and shelves of antique books. Just gorgeous. Ireland's oldest harp was also on display there. Max considered buying a miniharp from the gift shop but since it was smaller than a paperback book and had 3 strings and cost $40 US, I managed to talk him out of it. Really, what were we going to do with a mini-harp but break it one drunken night?


Entrance to Trinity College Campus


Trinity College Campus




Random building on campus







After Trinity College, we hopped into our car for the next leg of the trip - Kilkenny. Kilkenny is about an hour away from Dublin, and has a really beautiful castle there. We didn't have the time to go inside Kilkenny Castle but settled for taking some pictures of it and the surrounding area. We also visited the giftshop area, which used to be the stables for the castle. The city itself was very cute - very villagy and old looking and I wished we had the time to walk around and browse but we had a very full day planned.


View of Kilkenny from the back of the car


Kilkenny


Kilkenny Castle, from the street side


Coat of arms on gate of Kilkenny Castle


Me outside the castle


Max and castle courtyard




Max making a weird face - for those of you who haven't met him, this isn't how he normally looks!

We hadn't had lunch yet but didn't have the time to really sit down for a full meal, since we wanted to catch the last tour at Waterford Crystal Factory, about an hour away from Kilkenny, so we settled for some gas station food. Irish Gas Station Food -yikes!

We spotted a rainbow (one of many we saw over the week) and I tried to get a pic of it...you can kinda see it faintly just above the second tree from the left. Hmm..maybe not, but you can imagine one there...



Luckily, we made it Waterford just in time to catch the 4:15 p.m. tour. Since it was the last tour of the day, we even got a discount! The factory tour was very cool and showed in great detail how a piece of crystal is blown, molded, and then finally cut. Lots of steps in the middle, and lots of skill and craftsmanship required for the product to be sellable, which really made you appreciate their work. Which I suppose also helped justify opening your wallet for an extremely pricey Waterford Crystal piece at the end of the tour, when they shuffled you to the purchasing gallery. I was most impressed with the skills required to cut the crystal. Each piece is hand cut completely by memory - the cutters don't use lines or patterns and there is nothing to mark the depth of each cut - just sheer feel and experience. The cutters apprentice for at least ten years. So yes, it ALMOST made me want to buy a piece. Except not really because man, they're expensive!!! I was really sad that I forgot to bring my camera on this tour - I left it in the car. It was most unfortunate because I even got called up to help the glass blower and that would have been a pretty cool pic. Oh well.

After Waterford, we hopped back into the car for our final destination of the day - Cork. Cork is the second largest city in Ireland, I think, and it's a port city. There's a river running through the middle of it, like in Dublin. We got in at around 7:30-8 p.m. and checked into Hotel Isaacs. The location was pretty good, seemed to be lots of pubs and shops around. We had originally booked a reservation at a B&B but on the day before we left, I came across a TERRIBLE review of it - really horrible review - so we made a last minute change. We chose this hotel mainly because of the restaurant underneath it. Pete runs Greene's, the hotel restaurant at Isaacs, and he started out as a chef there back in the day. We thought it'd be cool to try his restaurant, even though he was busy getting ready for the wedding and wasn't working that week at all. The hotel was pretty old but had been refurnished. I loved the cobbled driveway/patio area that even had a small waterfall fountain in the back.


Cork - you can't see it, but the river is under this bridge


Hotel Isaacs


Entrance/driveway


Through the entrance gate...a little cobbled driveway/patio area. Waterfall way in the back.




View from our hotel room

When we first went down to the restaurant, they were fully booked, so the host said the earliest we could be seated was maybe 9:30, which was pretty late. But since it was our only opportunity to try Greene's, we decided to kill some time and check out the city and return for a super late dinner. There wasn't too much to see in Cork, just another city, so we finally just stopped at a pub across the street for a pint.


Pub where we stopped for a pint before dinner

When we returned the host was pretty surprised to see us - most would have just gone to another restaurant - but luckily there indeed was a table available. The food was great - definitely one of the best meals we had all week. Max had the hake with bacon and chorizo on top of smoked salmon and potatos (I think), and I had the pesto sea bass. Both were really good - however, we agreed Max's was better though. Bacon makes everything better.


Interior of Greene's - the waterfall is through that window


Max's hake (some kind of fish - we never did figure out how to pronounce it)


My pesto sea bass

After dinner we went out to try to check out some of the Cork city nightlife, but it turns out there wasn't any! We soon found out that most pubs close at 11 p.m. or so in Ireland on the weekday, and about midnight on the weekends. We walked around a bit and then finally gave up and headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day, and we both slept soundly through the night - no waking up from jet lag anymore!

That was Day Two.