roadtrip ireland part 1: cars, castles, and concerts

last saturday, following my parent's heading back home in time for my mom to have her first day of the school, katie and i also headed west. but not quite as far. we hopped a plane from london to dublin to start our weekend roadtrip around the country! when we arrived in ireland, we were greeted by a less-than-optimistic customs worker, who basically informed us that we were a) crazy b) probably going to die and c) dumb for planning to undertake this route (roughly). we ignored her and continued on to the car rental office, mostly undaunted, but gently reassuring each other that europeans probably just didn't appreciate the american concept of the roadtrip.
twenty minutes, a threat of uninsurance, and three clockwise roundabouts later, we found ourselves on the road in ireland heading south to kilkenny!

katie drove

on the left

while i photo-documented the landscape, which was beautiful
we started out on a major highway (an M class road) which then led to a "dual carriageway" (an N class road) and eventually we ended up on a narrow two lane road winding through the countryside slash farms (an R class road). it took us a while to understand the differences.
the analogous miami roads would be that an M is like I-95, an N is like bird road without intersections, and a R is like a road in homestead/the everglades. only with no shoulder and usually a fence immediately next to it. but all three feature livestock. just with it closer to you on the Ns and Rs.

as we wound our way southwest to kilkenny, we acknowledged any and all semi-ruined churches and castles either by yelling RUINS! or by getting out of the car and taking pictures

ruins for sale!

eventually, we made it to kilkenny much faster than the customs lady claimed we would despite a rather extended detour due to a school parade or something.
there, we found an amazing hotel
with giant rooms

the other (bigger) bed isn't pictured. neither is the ceiling.

the restored kilkenny castle

and the kilkenny arts festival, which had the town all abuzz

we walked around and got some food at a himalayan restaurant which was quite tasty. after dinner we were completely stuffed and decided to take a walk to see the oldest abbey in the town, from the 9th century. we got there and found that it wasn't accessible because it was on the property of a diageo brewery. oh well.

instead, we headed toward the second oldest one, the st. canice cathedral. as we got closer to it, we heard some music so we went to see what was going on. there as a table set up at the door selling tickets and the woman told us that as part of the festival, some bands were playing including low, who i didn't really know but katie was pretty excited about possibly seeing. we asked about tickets and she said 25euro. that seemed a little steep, so we turned around to go. but seeing this, she said, well we do have two tickets here that you can have for free (i guess someone was going to pick them up and never did?). however it happened, we ended up in a 12th century cathedral listening to low. and it was amazing. although i must admit that i might have fallen asleep at some points because it was cool and dark and the music was beautiful and gentle and i was tired.

after the show, we went to a bar or two and then headed to bed.
the next morning, we went for a run, had complementary breakfast in the old castle stables, and toured the kilkenny castle before heading out to see a castle of our own...