Ireland, Part 2

We were very tired from our journey around the Ring of Kerry, so we slept in a bit the next day. The Ring of Kerry was so much driving that we decided it would be nice to do something closer to home. The Rock of Cashel and Cahir Castle are only about an hour drive from Adare, so we felt we picked the perfect destination. The boys identified the most direct route on the map, and we headed out. We were enjoying the scenery so much, that it took us awhile to realize that we weren't where we thought we should be on the map. Luckily, there are a lot of signs even on the back roads in Ireland, so we made it to Cahir but it took a little bit longer than we thought.

Cahir Castle was one of my favorite places we visited. It is a huge castle that is very well preserved. There weren't very many people there, and it was fun to wander around the castle pretty much on our own. It was interesting to see all of the effort that went into making a castle defensible.

After we'd had some lunch we continued on to the Rock of Cashel, which was only a few miles away. The Rock of Cashel was a fortress at least from the 5th Century, when it is said that St. Patrick baptized the King of Munster there. The castle was given to the Catholic Church and most of what remains today was built in the 12th and 13th centuries. It is situated way up on a windy hill. It is very dramatic looking!

Our journey home was quite an adventure. Once again, we thought we'd located ourselves on the map, and started on our way. We soon realized that we had no idea where we were and started following the signs. Well, the signs weren't as reliable as they had been on the way there. We'd see a sign for the town we were heading toward saying it was 7km away, and the next sign we'd see would say it was 16km away. We were all getting restless, but there was nothing to do but keep following the signs. After looking at several maps on the computer when we got back, we think that we must have been zig-zagging back and forth. Our hour long trip home took almost two hours!