Exploring Ireland: Back in Ireland May 22, 2015

We are back, in Ireland and in Ennis again. Mike specifically scheduled us to return to spend a few days in Ennis for the Fleadh Nua, an annual music festival where all kinds of traditional Irish music can be heard. They have spent their days and nights in an assortment of pubs where musicians gather for session.

We got in early on Friday morning and headed for Ennis. As usual, we were all sleep deprived from trying to sleep on the plane. We found our first Irish breakfast at the Temple Gate Hotel, the same place we started 2 years ago. Unfortunately we were not staying there again this year but the breakfast was wonderful. Now what were we going to do between when we finished breakfast and when we could check in?

We tried to drive one of the walking tours with no success. For all the things it has going for it, street signs are not a strong point in Ennis. The few they have are small with the big letters of the street in Irish, the small captions being in English. So after a frustrating hour, we headed off to Bunratty Castle.

On our trip 2 years ago, I had gone there after dropping the guys at the airport. I had been skeptical, thinking it was a created old town like Williamsburg in the states. And it is a created theme 'park' but it was created from the actual houses and castle and I found it fascinating. So I suggested it would be a good place to spend a couple of hours, it is only about 20 minutes from Ennis.

Of course, in our sleep deprived state, we all left our cameras in the car, so to be truthful, the couple of pictures here are from my first trip. Scot was accusing me of fraudulent postings, so I figured I had to come clean :)

The castle is fascinating. Restored in the 1960's and 70's, It was the real deal, filled with furniture and artifacts of the era although they can from all over Europe. Mike noted from a plaque on the outside of the castle that William Penn was probably in the castle at one time because his father was an office there during the time that the founder of Pennsylvania would have been an infant.

Great Hall from 2 view points

Our only problem was that it being a Friday, we had school groups. An extremely polite group of French teens explored the whole castle at the same time we did. The other group were 40 or 50 Irish grade school kids. Fortunately, their teachers decided it wasn't safe for them to explore much beyond the great room on the first floor where the soldiers slept and the great room on the 2nd floor used by the family.

North Solar

The stairs are very narrow only allowing one person at a time. You were very aware of how much smaller the people were then. Mike and Scot would barely clear the doorways and neither is a particularly tall guy. The circular stairs were very small, even for those of us with small feet. They had added a pipe banister for our safety but I can not imagine what it must have been like to go up and down those stairs in a long skirt.

After the castle, we traveled though a lot of the buildings they had. The were real buildings that had been transported from their original locations to give an idea of how people worked and lived in other counties in the past. Particularly fascinating were the abundance of chickens, sometime rabbits and even in one case, the milk cows housed within the home. I remember my uncle Jimmy telling me that when he had visited our great aunt Mary in the house where my grandmother had grown up, that there were chickens in the living room. I imagined them running loose but as we saw, there were actual cages built in the living areas.

In addition to the houses, we saw many of the tools, animals and a village street.