We were both really really hoping for no wind, rain, and fog this morning, so while we waited for our breakfast, Kelly went for a closer look. No such luck.
One more yummy breakfast. Good thing I don't eat like this every day at home. The pants are fitting a bit tighter than they were at the beginning of the trip. Morgan is going to be very disappointed in me that I never tried black pudding. The black round thing in the middle of my plate here is white pudding, which was really very good, but we never did order black pudding, which has an additional ingredient in it. I'll let you google it if you don't know what it is.
This really isn't a great depiction of how nice this B&B was. The O'Connor House in Doolin is certainly one I'd recommend. I wish we were here in this cute town in the summer with some better weather where we could go explore a little down by the water.
If the weather had turned out better today, we were going to try and go back to the O'Brien castle and Cliffs of Mohr, but since it wasn't, we decided to take a little detour and head to Nenagh. This was the town I stayed in 20 years ago when I was here with my friend Katie.
We had to head through the Limerick tunnel to get there.
I really wanted to just drive through the town to see the things that have been stored in my mind for the last 20 years!
Nenagh Castle is still standing proud in the center of town!
This is the pub that Katie and her cousin took me to. I think it was just called The 44 back then and I remember it being red and black, but hey, paint! Ha!
This is St. Mary of the Rosary church in Nenagh. We went to mass here last time, and the inside is ridiculously gorgeous!
We found the road that the house was on that I had stayed in, but I couldn't remember exactly which one it was. Thanks Kelly, for taking the detour for me. It was so cool to be back there!
We headed to our final town on the tour and got some lunch and did some more souvenir shopping (nope, no yarn purchased today here! I really don't think one more skein would have fit in the suitcase!) and had one last touristy item on the agenda.
Bunratty Castle.
But first, let me take a selfie. Haha!
This was the hair BEFORE spending three hours walking around in drizzle. Dear Lord, my hair does not do well in drizzle. Fo shizzle.
This one was built in 1425, and also has some O'Brien ties.
Can you see the resemblance? I don't think my nose is quite as pointy, but they do have some big hair...
This tour was self guided, which I liked. They host medieval banquets and private parties in here. Wouldn't that be cool?
They've done a great job of restoring and including the old furniture and clothing. This was a knight's room.
This is the very tiny staircase down to the dungeon!
Huge tapestries showed signs of wealth and status.
The view from the top of the tower!
Whoa, deep.
Also included in this tour was a cute little "Bunratty Folk Park" which is sort of a museum of about 30 buildings showing how the people of the area lived in years past.
An old farmhouse...
This was in a farmhouse in a slightly wealthier area.
They had peat fires going in all the fireplaces.
The Ardcroney Church of Ireland was moved here and reopened in 1998.
Baaaah! Yarn!
We saw a few of these trees around, and the picture doesn't really show it very well, but they are really unique. I can't tell if it reminds me of a really bad fake Christmas tree, or some child's toy made out of pipe cleaners. They are pretty cool looking!
We didn't do all of the tours we could have along the way on this trip, which was fine. I did really like this one, where you could go on your own pace, and there was a ton to see. I should have gotten some better pictures of the spiral staircases in the castle. I can't imagine running up and down them during an attack or something wearing the clothing they had to wear back then!
After out three hour tour, we were going to check into our B&B, but it wasn't ready, so what were we to do?
We stopped into The Creamery pub for my daily Guinness. I wish I had gotten the name of all of the bartenders. I know there was a Daniel, Evan, Declan and Connor. (Connor is blurry in the background of that Guinness pic right up there👆) Oh and Liam sang to us that one night.
We headed back to the B&B to freshen up (I just loved this cute little tree in a small nook at the B&B), rest our tired legs, and try to repack everything into out tiny suitcases. I think the suitcases shrunk in the last week. Couldn't have been all the yarn purchases. Nope.
We headed out for dinner to the original Durty Nelly's - an almost 400 year old pub.
Since we are old and have been going nonstop for 10 days, and had a huge day of travel ahead of us, we didn't stay for the music that would start in a mere 3 hours (I just couldn't!) so we headed back to the beds to call it a wrap!
The castle was right across the street and looked so pretty lit up at night!
The pretty Parkhouse B&B in Bunratty was one of my favorites. We had to leave too early in the morning, so we didn't get our breakfast from this one, but the home is so pretty!
What a whirlwind! Tomorrow will bring 24 straight hours of travel to get me home to my own bed. For as much fun as we had, I can't wait!
XOXOX
NH
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