{"id":28555,"date":"2014-10-16T12:35:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T17:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=28555"},"modified":"2014-10-17T14:04:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T19:04:39","slug":"kilkenny-day-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=28555","title":{"rendered":"Kilkenny Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Killarney Day 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The light tapping of rain on our window woke us up this morning. We expected it to rain today, but we looked outside and it’s actual rain, and not just a light drizzle. Today is a travel day so we’ll spend a good amount of time inside our car, I guess at least we’ll stay dry while we are in the car. Oh yeah, I think closed windows did the trick, no more giant spiders attacked us during the nighttime. Shivers…hate those things.<\/p>\n

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\nHard to tell from the photo, but it’s raining raining. I’d say that it’s raining about as hard as, “almost having to use the max windshield wiper speed on your car.”<\/p>\n

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\nWe had a casual start, and now for a 3 plus hour drive in the rain. Sigh.<\/p>\n

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\nRain rain rain. Not only that, the bad visibility made passing almost impossible so everyone drove in a long train behind slow big trucks half of the time.<\/p>\n

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\nGet some lunch for the road.<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s see…chicken strips and a sandwich will do.<\/p>\n

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\nWe made a wrong turn…and it took us another 10 minutes or so to finally find a on ramp onto the highway. We stopped by the road to look at our map to find our way and this bull kept on making noises at us…Don’t think he’s a fan of us stopping by.<\/p>\n

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\nFinally found the on ramp. The going gets fast now, and there’s also two lanes so I can always pass!<\/p>\n

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\nOh oh oh, is the rain going to stop?<\/p>\n

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\nNope, the rain isn’t going to stop. It picked back up again. The Rock of Cashel is straight ahead.<\/p>\n

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\nOh poop, it’s under renovation.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s raining a good amount so we didn’t feel like getting wet to see a building being renovated. This is as close as we got before we got on our way again.<\/p>\n

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\nIn a little more than 3 hours of driving in the rain, we finally made it to our guesthouse in Kilkenny. I keep wanting to type Kill Kenny.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is what $102 a night gets you in Kilkenny about a 15 min walk from the middle of town. Kilkenny was kind of a tough one, there weren’t too many well rated accommodations here for reasonable prices. It’s always frustrating when all the choices are mediocre unless you spend the big bucks…so we picked the best rated one in our budget, even though it’s a little farther out of the town than would we prefer.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s even got a tub for the shower. I am not going to take a bath, but I do enjoy having a big shower area though!<\/p>\n

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\nView out our window.<\/p>\n

We unpacked then decided that we’ll take a walk into town center and walk around…scratch that. We walked out of the front door and saw that the rain had picked up quite a bit. I guess we’ll drive into town.<\/p>\n

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\nRain rain rain.<\/p>\n

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\nDrove into town, parked in a paid lot and just decided that I really don’t like the rain today. Let me just sit here in a car for a bit and regroup before I go out and face the weather. Tired and stressed from driving in the rain.<\/p>\n

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\nOK, let’s go.<\/p>\n

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\nGardens of Kilkenny Castle.<\/p>\n

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\nThe castle. It’s still raining, and I didn’t want to get water on my camera, so I didn’t take many photos.<\/p>\n

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\nWe elected not to pay to look at the inside.<\/p>\n

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\nOh look, a bar near the castle that’ll keep us away from the rain!! I’d much stay here for a bit than walk around in the wet.<\/p>\n

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\nMuch needed coffee for me.<\/p>\n

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\nRL still hungry after her light lunch. Here she is wolfing down her duck confit before I can even get a photo of it.<\/p>\n

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\nOf course, the moment we duck inside(pun!), the rain stops outside.<\/p>\n

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\nMaybe we’ll come back to the castle for just a couple more snaps.<\/p>\n

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\nEven though it’s stopped raining, my disdain for the wet has not stopped.<\/p>\n

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\nWe’ve been in many music shops here in Ireland and none of them have a good selection of accordions. We see so many accordions being played at the pubs, but the stores rarely carry more than a couple of them. I wonder where the Irish go for their accordions?<\/p>\n

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\nGetting my hair did.<\/p>\n

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\nAT-AT!! I saw these in a random window, I think it was a residence. Lucky kids!!!<\/p>\n

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\nThe Black Abbey.<\/p>\n

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\nSt. Canice’s Cathedral.<\/p>\n

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\nThat tower looks like it leans a little.<\/p>\n

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\nStone mason getting things done. Love how they just start with a piece of stone and then shape it to whatever it needs to be on the spot.<\/p>\n

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\nI hate iPad photo takers!!<\/p>\n

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\nHe was trying to take a photo of this…which I already took a photo of from the other side. But the lighting is better now, so I too took another photo.<\/p>\n

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\nKetchup and mustard.<\/p>\n

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\nLike the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, but for Smithwick’s…that’s ok, I think I’ll skip.<\/p>\n

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\nKyteler’s Inn, used to be owned by Ireland’s first convicted witch….The inn was established in 1324…that’s a long time ago.<\/p>\n

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\nWe walked around some more in Kilkenny, but frankly, not the biggest fan of this town. It has old buildings, but other than that, doesn’t seem to have a lot of character. It feels a little bit like if you took all the stores in suburban anywhere USA and put them inside a town with medieval buildings. It is here that we kept on running into Euro stores(their equivalent of $1 stores). Also inside the middle of town is also their equivalent of Wal-Mart, seriously, it’s that big. It’s certainly the biggest store that we’ve seen since being in Ireland.<\/p>\n

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\nMight as well drink a beer at Kyteler’s. There’s music and story telling in about an hour and a half…<\/p>\n

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\nMeh, screw this. We don’t like Kilkenny. We walked around here and there just isn’t that much to see or do. I think we’ll call it a day, get some food and eat it back at our room. Yeah, that’s how much we are not a fan of this place.<\/p>\n

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\nFood from Kilkenny’s Super Walmart equivalent. Seriously, first time for me to see a store as big as the big boxes in the US…and it’s literally in the middle of the old town!!<\/p>\n

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\nKilkenny, you disappoint me.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Kilkenny Day 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Killarney Day 2. The light tapping of rain on our window woke us up this morning. We expected it to rain today, but we looked outside and it’s actual rain, and not just a light drizzle. Today is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":28029,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28555","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28555"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28715,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28555\/revisions\/28715"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}