The Kilkenny Buzzkill

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time: to take the bus to Kilkenny and spend the day exploring castles and cathedrals and shopping from Irish craftspeople selling their goods along centuries-old streets. An enjoyable way to spend our last Saturday in Ireland, right? Not so much, as it turned out.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I consider kvetching to be an art form. I could get into a good griping rant here. But I will try to remain positive. Because there is nothing wrong with Kilkenny itself. I think the problem lay in ourselves: travel fatigue, poor estimation of our timetable, inadequate consideration of nutritional needs, and our shared dislike of crowds.

We started out early for the Dublin bus station, which is situated behind the Custom House, up the Liffey about a half hour from our flat. There was frost on the Ha'Penny Bridge when we crossed it, and the sidewalks were slippery. Dubliners are not used to such frost in December, they say. Some teenagers were ice surfing across the slick surfaces, with glee. Jo was bundled up, as usual, and we walked fast to stay warm.

We passed a group of chatty kids--I'm guessing Chinese--meeting up outside Paddy's Hostel (rooms 15 euro a night, with airport transportation offered on the "Paddywagon," according to a sign outside), near the bus station. I am feeling old in Dublin, where the streets are full of teenagers and 20-somethings, all seemingly with energy to spare, caught up in the adventure of the new city.

At the bus station, we got out the tickets we'd bought earlier in the week and found our queue for the #7, due in at 9 a.m. The station interior was bright and well-organized, in contrast to my memories the dark, noisy NY Port Authority station, back in my schlepp-to-Fordham days. The peaceful bus to Kilkenny was very unlike the NJ Transit bus I'd catch in Toms River, already full of Atlantic City gamblers sleeping it off on the way back to New York. Now that was a multicultural event, providing valuable first-hand experience in assessing a wide range of mental health diagnoses. But I digress. Our bus on Saturday was not quite full, even with a few more stops to collect more passengers. It was clean and comfortable and, except for the magpie chattering of three Spanish girls across the aisle for the entire trip on such riveting subjects as friends' activities, fashion news, camera and cell phone use, and Barack Obama (if my eavesdropping translation was accurate, which it may not have been, admittedly). Jo dozed as the trip got underway. I looked out the window and squinted in the bright morning sun for most of the trip.

The ride to Kilkenny was over two hours. The woman who sold us the tickets at the tourist center indicated the trip would take about half that time. Perhaps it is an Irish thing. Because it reminded me of my dear (Irish) father who, whenever I asked him how long it would take to get just about anywhere, would assure me, with great conviction, that a half-hour was all I'd need. I grew up believing that anyplace I wanted to go was (more or less) 30 minutes from where I was. So there is always an internal conflict between the part of me that believes the world is my oyster and anything I could possibly need or want is within my reach... and the fussbudget in me who wants to know actual distances and times and gets cranky when the half hour is up and I'm nowhere near my destination. The trip to Kilkenny was pleasant enough that my optimism didn't waver, and I could take some misty pix from the bus, but I was tired of sitting by the time we passed through Athy, and I was glad when the driver announced a while later that we had arrived at Patrick St in Kilkenny.

Once there, we got the lay of the land and made finding breakfast a priority. We were just under the wire for the breakfast menu at The Field, a pub at the corner of Patrick St and High St. We both ordered the "Full Irish," for sustenance, and shared a pot of tea. The Full Irish is a lot of food--a fried egg, a couple of sausages, a rasher of Irish bacon, sauteed mushrooms, a grilled half tomato, a hash brown, black and white puddings, toast. The b/w pudding stays on the plate (eeeeww); I trade my hashbrown for Jo's mushrooms, and we eat around the egg yolk. It is a good breakfast, but one I've had just a couple of times here. I rarely eat meat, but it seems OK to eat the sausages and bacon of a Full Irish.

But then on the way home from Kilkenny, we heard on the radio that there is a recall of pork products made in SE Ireland, where Kilkenny is, because of something toxic in the pig feed. So much for my venture into pork product consumption. I'm still breathing, so maybe the pig who gave his life for our breakfast was fed from the healthier feed silo. One can only hope.

Field's was a sports pub, full of English and American sports memorabilia, and when our eyes adjusted to the light, we saw that we were the only women in the place except for the server. Oh well. The lads at the tables next to and behind us were all eating their Full Irishes and talking about the big football game that afternoon. There was a schedule posted in the window for the weekend's games on TV. The Irish love their football.

Oh, and there was a license plate from New Jersey nailed to the wall near the bar. How bad could the place be?!

Thus fortified, we walked up the street called "The Parade" to Kilkenny Castle, passing major road construction en route. There is a of construction all over Ireland. The economy is as bad here as anywhere, but the Irish seem intent on improving infrastructure and getting established in the 21st century.

The castle is visible from all over town, situated as it is on a hill in the middle of about 50 acres of its own park. It has all the turrets and parapets and crenellation (is that what you call it?) that give it a fairytale appearance and lots of popular appeal. It's open to the public by tour only, so we got in line for tickets. We scored the next to the last spots for the 2 p.m. tour and went off to explore the town in the meantime.

So in case you're ever on Jeopardy and need to know about Kilkenny: The town is built on the River Nore, which provided a natural castle moat from about the early 1000s, when the usual Anglo-Normans established a walled town there. The earlier settlement was by St. Canice, who built a church and a school there in the 6th century and gave the town its name, from Kil Canneach, which translates to Church of Canice and was anglicized to Kilkenny. Enlarged in the 13th century, St. Canice's Cathedral is at one end of the town, on a hill, all dark and imposing and built out of local black stone. The Victorians restored it with the usual Vic flair in about 186o or so. It's second in size only to St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Dublin, and quite impressive from the outside. Which is all we got to see of it, because it closes early in November, and we didn't time our ascent to the cathedral early enough. It was that kind of day.

From Patrick St, High St turns into Parliament St, the main drag through Kilkenny, the one with the medieval buildings, cobblestone streets and narrow sidewalks. Off Parliament are several old side streets leading up hills to Interesting Old Things. At the end of one such street, called Abbey Lane, we came upon Black Freren Gate, part of the original walled city and dating to the 14th century. Someone has the good fortune to own the little blue-doored house adjacent to the stone gate and has created a lovely courtyard behind an iron gate. I wouldn't mind living there.

Through the Black Freren Gate and up a little way further is the Black Abbey, where black-robed Dominican monks (hence the name) had a community from about 1225. The bigger church was built about a century later, with stained glass windows visible from the outside. It's still a Catholic church unlike many of the older cathedrals and churches in Ireland that were taken over by the Prots after the Reformation and are Church of Ireland (Anglican). It's a lovely little church, with pretty roof lines and doors. And that's all of it we saw, because 1 p.m. Mass was underway when we got there, and we couldn't get inside. (Who has mass at 1 p.m. on a Saturday, I ask you?) We were taking some pix outside when two parishioners approached us to offer a leaflet about a rosary march up the Parade to the castle on Monday evening. When he heard we were in town just for the day, he smiled and took the leaflet back. Oh well.

Back on Parliament St we jostled our way through the crowds and looked in shop windows. Kilkenny was very busy on this Saturday, a few weeks before Christmas. The sidewalks were jammed. Jo and I cannot figure out the Irish sidewalk etiquette. Do we walk on the left, since they drive on the left here? No, that doesn't work. How about walking to the right? No, that doesn't work, either. People just walk in each other's path all the time, and it's like a game of chicken to see who will give way first. No one makes much eye contact, so that social cue is missing. And then there are the little groups of friends or family groups that just stop in the middle of the very narrow sidewalk and chat, taking up most of the space and not seeming too concerned that everyone has to walk around them. And no one seems to complain about it to them. Oh, and then there are the strollers everywhere, being pushed into crowds or across streets with abandon, or being stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk for who knows what reason. (Oh, and commenting on how cute someone's baby is? Not done here. Most mothers look absolutely hostile when we notice their babies, who tend to be truly adorable.) So just getting from point A to point B involves much maneuvering and sidestepping. And no one really seems to care. And that's how it was in Kilkenny on a Saturday in December, when lots of people were out to do Christmas shopping along Parliament St. But I digress in the direction of kvetchdom.

Jeopardy break: "What is a tholsel, Alex?" is the correct response to "an 18th century square-shaped stone portico used for public business in a town center." The tholsel in Klikenny was built in 1761 and the address has an interesting bit of local lore attached to it. Seems that one Dame Alice Kyteler, a local legend for having survived four husbands whom she was suspected of poisoning back in the14th century, had a maid called Petronilla. The law caught up with Dame Alice and she was sentenced to death, in part for the deaths of her husbands and in part because she was suspected of being a witch for knowing how to kill them off in the first place (something about poisoning their meat at the public house she ran, I think). So Dame Alice is sitting in prison, awaiting execution, when something or someone incapacitated the guards and she escaped. So what did the town do? They decided to execute her maid Petronilla instead. Such was justice in the 14th century, I suppose. Thus poor Petronilla met her maker on the site of the later-constructed tholsel on Parliament St, and Dame Alice's public house is now Kyteler's, a pub in Kilkenny. There were carolers singing on the tholsel when we walked by.

It wouldn't be a town in Ireland without an Oliver Cromwell story of its own, right? It was in 1650 that the big bad bully Cromwell sacked Kilkenny and used the cathedral for his horses. Ol' Olly got around and wreaked havoc wherever he went. Forget whatever English history you learned that may have lionized Cromwell. In Ireland he was bad news from the get go, and they hate him as much as he hated Ireland.

Up another alleyway was St. Mary's Cathedral, a Catholic church with a Victorian look to it but not a lot of history available. The art for the Stations of the Cross was gruesome, but the windows were pretty. The big rosary window over the main door was obscured from the inside by a huge pipe organ. This was a serious church. I lit a candle for the leezards next to the statue of St. Joseph. I'm always surprised to find the doors unlocked and no security guard in sight on big old churches.

We did some book shopping on Parliament St and had tea upstairs at the cafe there. in the afternoon. Have I mentioned how much I like the whole concept of stopping for tea and something nice during a day's activities? Oh, perhaps I have.

So somewhere in the middle of all the Kilkenny sightseeing and sidewalk jostling, we made it up the Parade hill to the castle for our 2 p.m. tour.

Maybe I'm a little castled out by now, but I wasn't diggin' Kilkenny Castle. It's visually impressive, but the tour left me tepid. We learned that the castle construction started in about 1172 and that the property--castle and hundreds of acres of surrounding land--came into the posession of the Earls and Dukes of Ormonde, aka the Butler family, in about 1391. They had ties to the English royal family but lived for generations, happily, in Ireland. In the 19th century, the family Ormonde did some renovations, with the result being a Victorian Feudal Revival makeover. They added a portrait gallery wing and some hand-painted wood features, too. But the cost of maintaining the castle got prohibitive, and by the 20th century the family couldn't afford the upkeep. So in 1967, the 6th Marquess of Ormonde sold the whole kit and kaboodle to the Irish state for about 75 pounds. The castle deteriorated for a few decades before restoration efforts could be funded. Today Kilkenny Castle is a big tourist draw, and the 50 acre park it overlooks is a popular place for picnics and walking.

The tour starts in a big entry hall with a one-ton marble table in the middle of it, then goes up a grand Victorian staircase, hung with Christmas garland, to a dining hall with wood panelling at the windows and a mishmash of furniture that is not original to the estate. Then it's up another set of stairs to a library with silk-covered walls and a mix of reproduction and period pieces, mostly Victorian but some earlier. There's a pretty walnut pianoforte and a chess table. That gives way to a family drawing room with more of the same. Upstairs from that, two bedrooms, one showing the Chinese influence. And in a sideroom, the first indoor toilet in town, about twice the size of a modern toilet. And then to the long portrait gallery, where the painted wooden ceiling caught my eye, but not for long, because the tour was over. My impression was that the castle itself, and particularly the fairy-tale look of the exterior, is what people come to see, rather than the history of the place. But we did get to see it, and I'm glad. It was decorated for Christmas, a la mode Victorian, and that was festive.

There was an Irish TV film crew at Kilkenny Castle, doing a talent show broadcast from one of the rooms. We stopped at the loo and found ourselves sharing that space with a couple of dozen young adolescent girls, all coifed and rouged and in dance recital-style Irish dancing outfits. They were playing pop music on a CD player and all talking at the same time and sharing hair spray. We haven't seen them on TV yet, but maybe they're being saved for a Christmas special, along with the cathedral choirs. That's the story I'm going with.

So with the castle tour in the middle of the day, and toodling around town before and after (including a stop at the Irish Craft Center across from the castle, where things were just ludicrously expensive and being bought up by people with way more money than we have), we hit our Kilkenny wall and decided to catch an earlier bus back to Dublin. It was one of our better ideas for the day.

Riding through the darkness, it was interesting to see all the dark little towns we passed through, each with its own pub(s) and storefront take-away food place, each with people on the street, bundled up against the cold. It's very dark on the road in Ireland at night, especially once you leave the lights of the town or village. I could understand how stories of goblins and banshees might get started on those country roads at night in November.

The bus driver was listening to a call-in radio show about football (soccer) coaching changes. That gave way to an hour of 1970s disco music, including songs that weren't even that popular in the 1970s. Next was country/western. Unusual playlists for Ireland in 2008, I thought.

When we got back to Dublin, there was a traffic jam along the Liffey, and the driver opened the door just past the Ha'Penny Bridge and let everyone out. Bonus! He saved us at least 15 minutes of walking from the bus station. Yay for that. I was tired.

Also hungry and, truth be told, a little cranky. I'm like a toddler when we travel--good to go as long as I have had a little rest, a little food, and some fluids from time to time. But it had been a long day. We were both ready for dinner. Little did we know that every single restaurant in Dublin would be full and that, without reservations, we were SOL when it came to getting dinner in town. Believe me, we tried. No one had a table for us. It was hard not to take it personally. I was very tired and feeling like the ugly stepsister excluded from the ball by the time we decided to just go back to the flat. We picked up some bread in a little shop and went home for soup and bread and tea--not quite as pathetic as it sounds, because the bread was really good and the soup was nice, too. But you get the idea.

But it was a fitting end to a disappointing day. We both started talking about going home as a positive thing. That happens on a trip, doesn't it? There's the anticipation of going away, and then the excitement of being someplace new, and then the fun of getting your bearings and having plans for the next day, and then the adventure loses a little of its sheen and you start thinking about how nice your own bed will feel, and how good it will be to shower with familiar water pressure, and how making your own meals again will be a welcome relief. I think our Kilkenny experience brought us to that point. And it is just as well, because we leave on Tuesday. I will be sad to go, because I have loved being in Ireland. But it is time.

Well, not quite yet. Miles to go before then! (I do go on, don't I?)