'Tis a sad, sad, day...

We must leave our new favorite place today :-(  All good things come to an end (at least in our world).  It has been truly spectacular and, fortunately for us, we're not quite done as we get to spend a full day in London tomorrow.  Also, to be quite honest, we're getting tired of being in our little red VW Polo every day. 

Side story:  ever since Killarney, Carrie's had the Bing Crosby version of "Christmas in Killarney" in her head and unable to get rid of it.  Just when she'd lost it, I whistled it so she could suffer some more.  Yeah, that's what I call fun.



Irish orneriness

We left our B&B near Kinsale (county Cork) and drove on Monday to Kilkenny.  It was (surprise) a lovely drive.  On the way, we explored the City of Cork, which was much larger than I expected.  We toured a very old jail.  It was pretty interesting and reinforced how harsh life was in the 1800's (many months of jail for stealing a piece of fabric for instance).

Then, we took the fast road (which is still pretty scenic) to Kilkenny, which turned out to be such a beautiful little town.  We stayed at a great hotel (Kilkenny River Court) which was right on the river and looked up at Kilkenny castle, which was amazing.



Our hotel on left + Kilkenny castle

We had time to walk around and explore this great town and that evening had the pub experience we'd always envisioned with singing and drinking and making new friends.  It was a spectacular evening at Tynan's pub (27th and last of our weeklong Irish pub crawl).

Liam and Patrick in full glory/plastered

Then, we had a nice Irish breakfast this morning and took the motorway to Dublin.  We'll be in London tonight and give you the 4-1-1 on that experience before we come home.