Day 7
Friday, September 2
Friday morning we set out a little after 8:00, heading for Kilkenny. There were two things I had read about that I really wanted to see in Kilkenny, which was a two-hour drive away. The first challenge was a map that was older than the road. I was trying to avoid using my GPS on the iPhone, as I had already used 250M of data in the five days we had been in-country. (!!) I finally figured out what road to take, after we had passed beyond the points where I had expected to find exits. Midway down, we stopped in the cute little town of Abbeyleix for breakfast, then continued to Killenny.
The first thing I wanted to see was the Butler Museum in te basement of the castle. It was free and purported to have an excellent exhibition. #fail! It was very avant garde, contained about 10 items by one artist and was of almost zero interest to us. Then we walked across the street to the Kilkenny Design Craft Centre, which included a museum and artist’s studios. I expected to see a wide variety of artists represented, and a wide variety of techniques and skills. I saw some slumped and fused glass that was unusual, and some pottery from colored clay that was unusual, but for the most part the displayed wares were upscale, glitzy, and pricey. I could have skipped Kilkenny entirely!
After a short walk in town and a pub stop for lunch, we headed out and drove an hour-and-a-half up to Dublin.
We arrived in Dublin around 3:00 on Friday afternoon and checked into the Ballsbridge Inn. Then we drove the car back to Hertz and dropped it. There was no way we were going to try to drive in the mass chaos that was Dublin traffic.
We learned that there are four million residents of Ireland, and two million of them live in Dublin. Wow!
Once back at the hotel, we took a walk around the block to scope out restaurants. We discovered the U.S. Embassy was just down the block. And we saw people everywhere. Masses of people. And they were all wearing green or blue. It turns out the Euro 2010 qualifying game of the European football league (UEFA: Union of European Football Associations) was being held that night, a mere two blocks from our hotel. There were 44,761 in attendance, and 44,500 of those fans walked by our hotel. We walked in the other direction and found a pub in which to eat, drink, and watch football.