Ireland Day 1

After the longest travel the family has done, we have arrived.

A quick trip through customs and it was time to grab the car…which was a manual. As it turns out wrong side of the car, the road, and manual transmission was too much for me to handle, so we swapped for an automatic.

Holy shit is driving stressful.

Roads are narrow, there are all the roundabouts and very little is intuitive. It is interesting all the things you do on autopilot back home you are suddenly very aware of here.

Right mirror to make sure you aren’t out of your lane, left to make sure you aren’t too far in your lane, rear view to check who is behind you, GPS so you know where you are going and your family fogging up the windows sweating with nervous energy watching all of this happening.

 You either get good at driving or clearly die here.

Our first stop is Kilkenny, and it was a welcome change from learning to drive in Dublin. I only hit one sidewalk 😉 we found a car park (turns out the parking here is awesome) and went to FoodWerks for a late lunch. Kids had French toast (this will be a theme later I’m sure) On the menu was a three-meat burger (beef, lamb, and pork I think) and I had fish and chips with mushy peas. As it turns out I had no idea I needed mushy peas in my life…I am taking notes on the proper way to create this surprisingly yummy dish – let’s be honest peas can be kind of boring usually. Kilkenny was much busier than I think we imagined it would be - we wouldn’t learn til later Monday was a bank holiday which meant the entire country joined us on holiday.

After lunch, we crossed the street to Smithwicks and then over to Castle Kilkenny. If you’ve not been here there is just a castle in the middle of the city, technically there is more than one but still is stunning the permanence these cities have the only thing that seems close is Washington D.C. and that is not a very close analog. It’s actually hard to wrap my head around the crashing together of modernity and the rift in the multiverse that has brought with it buildings from the 1500s. We shopped around a bit getting the lay of the land, I love walking cities because I find I can understand a place much faster. One of the things we had to learn with kids is that they have pay toilets 🚽 which is sort of genius, I might rethink that sentence later but for now, I am fascinated. It being a city-wide holiday the energy was that of celebrating and what better way to celebrate than with ice cream from Scrumdiddly’s, home of the Scrummy tub which is their answer to a Pump House or anywhere you take ice cream and add candy. Already though I can see the Irish have a very different interaction with sugar than we do. The toppings are behind the counter and measured before being given to your children which gives a sense that there was not just care in its creation but an understanding of how many gummy worms you need on your ice cream.  

From ice cream, we head to our first hotel, Hotel Kilkenny for night number one. This was one of two hotels we were staying at that had a pool so the kids went straight downstairs and I was shortly behind them after finding out there was both a steam room and a sauna – if you have not jumped into a sauna after a long day of travel, allow me to give you that gift. The pool itself was large but felt more like it was in a grotto than it was a hotel which gave a cool vibe to the whole experience.

Quick story, if you are a parent and you are doing activities with your kids there is an invisible clock that is always counting down til they are all out of energy for the day the trick is to beat that clock to bed or everyone suffers the consequences. After an hour in the pool, I could tell it was time to grab some food and get to bed so we cleaned up. It was straight to the hotel restaurant called Rosehill Bar 1831 which was a very modern spot with some very cool art on the wall and what you might imagine the wallpaper in Europe to look like, timeless and inviting, so it was time to eat. I had the sea bass which was exactly what I was after and I paired it with a pour of Yellow Spot an Irish whiskey that has these amazing brulee notes (that burned sugar, custard note that I LOVE), honey, and barley on the end. Yellow Spot is a Jameson brand and one I was very interested in trying – I hear there is a 15 year in Ireland and after this, I am on the hunt for it knowing I can probably find it in Dublin at the end of the trip. Angie had a salad and the kids ate some fruit and pasta before it was time to head upstairs.

Then the world stopped.

We crashed HARD at 7p not waking til after 10a the next day.