Back to Dublin

The last day of the trip was spent working our way back to Dublin from Killkenny. We have a room at the Carrollton Hotel just outside the Dublin airport. Nothing left to do on the tip but see a few more sites, dump the car, spend the night and then to the airport and home.

Killkenny castle

We woke in the morning at the Chaplin’s in Killkenny and came down to breakfast.

Jim jumped on the Internet to check the scores on the late games only to find that the Packers had lost in OT and several other upsets had taken place back in the states. We both took a beating with our picks but without a ‘big board’ we have idea how anyone else did.

 At breakfast for the first time we found others in the room and conversation was possible. A fellow traveling by himself was over here for some famous month long, matchmaking festival in western Ireland. Folks come from all over to try and ‘hook up’.

Anyway, the fellow actually had a place not three miles from Larry’s place in the UP.

Since we had time we decided to forgo the main highway and opted to finish the trip on back roads back to Dublin. One of the sites on the way was “The Meeting of the Waters” made famous by some Irish poet. We had a pint at the tavern above it then walked down to find it was basically two moderate steams coming together with some minor rapids.

All in all it was a disappointment based on the hype.

Maybe it’s just popular with Irish poets and the young lads they take there.

Several more quaint town and some minor wrong turns. Speaking of that, we’re quite proud of how we did driving in Ireland. We missed a few turns here and there but never went out of our way more that 3 miles or so before realizing it and backtracking.

A typical road

Our final stop of the trip was a 5^th century monastic ruins called Timoleagh that Larry had seen previously. It was very interesting and had quite a history.

In the middle was a huge tower with a door about 15 ft of the ground.

When the poop hit the fan and trouble came their way, the monks would clamber up a ladder inside, pull up the ladder, and taunt the invaders from above. A pretty good survival plan for the times I guess.

This was the fourth place we visited that wanted to charge us to get into the gift shop to buy stuff, the first of which was St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin the first day. What is wrong with these people? Charging tourists to get in to spend money

We made it to Dublin, filled the tank, found the hotel, got a Pizza Hut pizza, dumped the car, and settled in to repack for the trip.

We caught a shuttle to the airport in the morning, checked in, cleared US Customs in Dublin and boarded the plane after only waiting about 10 min in the lounge. So far so good or at least we thought.

The plane taxied away from gate, got in line to take off and the pilot got on the intercom to tell us a computer had failed and back the gate we went. They had to fly a part in from London and we departed about three hours late. We arrived in Chicago to discover that the next flight we could get out on was 4 hours later.

Luckily brother Dan came to meet us at the airport so we had much more time to sit and talk than we had originally expected. The three of us walked over to the attached hotel, had a beer and some soup and had a great visit

We took a cab to Ed and Micky's house due to our late arrival time, visited for a short while the packed up and headed out on the final push home.

We finally arrived back in Appleton around 2:00am putting and end to a very enjoyable and unforgettable trip