The Beginning of an Adventure

We arrived in Dublin at 7:00 am on Saturday. I honestly had never been so tired in all my life. Staying awake on the red eye flight proved to be a not good idea, I literally fell asleep while walking around the city. How does that even happen? Needless to say we were not able to enjoy Dublin quite as much as we had hoped.

Despite our lack of sleep, crabby moods and hungry stomachs we did see a few really cool things. there were a lot of brightly decorated bars, including this one (above).

We visited a nearby park where we frolicked and saw some great statues including this one (below).

I even tried my hand at balancing on this tiny fence. (I'm sure that fence was there to keep us off the lawn and just look at where I threw my bag. I kill myself sometimes!)

Trinity College was absolutely stunning. The buildings were so beautiful and there were cobble stone walk ways everywhere.

After spending a good day in Dublin, we ventured off to Kilkenny for our first sleep over. Kilkenny was a cute little town, but again, we were too tired to really enjoy it.

We stayed in a hostel the first night just out side of Kilkenny . . . in a castle.

It was pretty cool on the outside and even had this great hobbit like front door. I'll admit I was pretty excited. I mean how many people can say that they've slept in a castle?

My excitement turned to almost tears as soon as we entered and I took one look at where we would be sleeping.

It was a dirty room with 14 beds in it. There were HUGE spiders crawling on the walls and the bedding was not even close to being clean.

It was NOT what I had in mind for my first night in a castle, in Ireland. Luckily I had a blanket to cover my pillow with and long pants, long socks and a hooded sweatshirt to cover the rest of my body with. It was not a good nights sleep, but I survived.

The next morning we took in The Rock of Cashel. It was a castle that was turned into a church and dates back to the 12th century. We took a free guided tour where the girl explained all kind of crazy things that they use to believe. My favorite was that if you could fit your arms all the way around the remains of this cross, you would never have another toothache.

Of course I had to give it a try. I was so excited when my monkey arms came through for me and I was the only one who could do it. Hurray, no more toothaches for me!

This is the abbey that you could see from the Rock of Cashel.

I thought I would leave you with one of my favorite pictures from the trip. It's in the grave yard of the Rock of Cashel. Stay tuned for more from Ireland!