Many of our fellow travelers chose to head home today, we were going to take one more day to relax.  We decided that we would visit the Kilkenny Castle since we missed the walking tour of Kilkenny yesterday.  After some good instructions from the hotel concierge, we grabbed a cab into town.  We got our tickets to castle and started out self-guided tour.  The 800 years of Kilkenny Castle’s history are associated with the fortune and decline of the Marshal & Butler families. As you can guess there are a lot of stairs in an old castle, no elevators.  This limited my accessibility to some of the third floor bedroom, but much of the library, reading room, music room, dining room and picture gallery were a great examples of a Medieval castle.  Also, the grounds were massive and in pristine condition. 

The hotel concierge told us about a little cafeteria just across the street from the Kilkenny Castle.  So, we crossed the street into a very large souvenir shop.  While it was full of souvenirs, with the goal of separating tourist from the money, it was also nicely done and didn’t look like a bunch of cheap junk.  Upstairs was the cafeteria that were told about.  We both had the “fish chowder”.  I have never seen so much fish in a chowder in my life, plus it was many different kinds of fish.

Back to the hotel for a restful afternoon and dinner at the “The Grill & Bar” in the hotel.  I tried one more Irish Whiskey, this time with one ice cube.  I liked it better that way. 

We headed back to the room to pack and get ready for an early exit from the hotel.  We had to catch our ride to the Dublin airport at 2:30 AM!!!

Kilkenny Castle