Ireland Trip 2023
From the gaol in Cork we went to the butter museum, which sadly was one of the more underwhelming tourist attractions ever—almost, but not quite, hilariously so. There was a very droning movie interviewing all the butter elites of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and it went on and on about marketing methods. The kids liked an interactive display of butter labels and print-your-own labels, and an upstairs exhibit about cattle raiders in ancient Irish history was mildly amusing. It did get humorous when we were leaving and the person at the desk said "sure you've not seen the whole museum now, have you? Even the second half?" The kids and I just smiled (or not) politely (or not) and kept walking out, but yes—we had indeed seen the entire museum.
We figured out the rather complicated “disc” parking for the streets of Cork (spoiler: it’s not really a disc) and walked through some of the windy streets over to the English Market (everyone says it’s not really English) for lunch.
At the English market we bought two big hero-sizes rolls of soft floury white bread and a sliced loaf of Irish brown bread (the best we’ve had anywhere here) and also a smoked mackerel spread, a smoked salmon and crab spread, and a mashed poached salmon and scallion spread from Hederman’s, plus an Irish triple creme cheese and a cranberry goat cheese from On the Pig’s Back. Then Robert and Samantha got some South American-ish buns and filled items (dulce de leche stuffed mini churros and ham and cheese croquettes) from a little takeaway shop a block over. We sat at a bench on the street and ate, and then walked back to the car.
Next we went to the Blarney Castle just outside of town; I played up the murder hole, the oubliette, and the poison garden. Samantha DEFINITELY perked up at the thought of a poison garden—it goes nicely with her goth/emo/who-knows-what image these days.
Once there, we walked through the gardens, and Helen loved checking “stone circle” off her list in her kids’ tour of Ireland book. At a certain point we heard it was a 90 minute wait in line to get INTO the castle, and then all three kids balked. It did end up taking 87 minutes, so I’d say their estimates are accurate. We skipped the Blarney stone itself, though the kids were fascinated watching people contort themselves to kiss it, and eventually made it out of there a few minutes before closing. Marcus said the entire place looked like Knotts Berry Farm—theme-park like, with its giant lines and playful signs (interestingly, notably not bilingual Irish/English).
From the Blarney castle we drove about an hour to our AirBnB for the evening, which is a 15th century castle (single tower) near Cahir and Clonmel. We stopped at an Indian place in Mitchelstown, along the way, and had very nice butter chicken (sidenote: apparently the butter museum may have been worth it after all, as everyone happily discussed the butter flavor profile and some Irish butter facts while we ate), garlic lamb masala, and fish balti with some pappadums and naan and rice and a mango lassi. This was another familiar meal for our kids.
In that same town we stopped so Robert could gas up the car and Marcus, Helen, and I ran into a supermarket to get stuff for breakfast tomorrow (rashers, fruit, toast). Helen loved the little cart in the supermarket, and said “I feel just like Ron on Platform 9 3/4!” as she ran full-tilt down an almost deserted aisle.
We made it to the castle we are staying in for two nights, Grantstown Castle in Kilfeacle. It’s pretty awesome. This place was not cheap, but for two nights seemed like an acceptable splurge for an aboslutely once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Helen was over the moon, and even Samantha had a smile on her face, and Marcus was snapping selfies against cool backgrounds and texting them to his friends (the cannon was in his room).
In the morning, Robert cooked up the rashers, and we had the yogurts, chocolate croissants, bananas, clementines, and tea, cocoa, and coffee. I also finished off the last of the smoked fish spreads on the Cork city brown bread. It was a very lovely leisurely morning.
After breakfast, Helen found a swing outside and wandered around the grounds and was just in heaven.
It was raining that morning, as it had a little bit every day since we’ve been here. Typically it’s rained only 5-10 minutes at a time and then cleared, but this was light drizzly rain for about a solid hour. We drove 20 minutes to the Rock of Cashel, a site where the Irish kings of Munster (including Brian Boru) used to rule from, and which then became associated with St Patrick and has a lot of buildings from 1100-1270 still standing (or mostly so) today.
There was a guided tour that we attached ourselves to for the first bit (about St Patrick’s cross and the legend of how if you’re able to put your arms all the way around it, you’ll “never suffer from flatulence again.” The guide’s name was Patrick, and he liked to point out that there’s St Patrick’s cross, St Patrick’s cathedral, and even himself, “though I’m no saint.” He had a distinctive accent that we hadn’t heard yet on our trip, and I liked listening to him, but we did want to move faster than the tour so we just walked around on our own and explored.
Then I took Helen down the hill to go to the bathroom, and when everyone rejoined us we bought a post card for Evie and then walked down to another ruined abbey, cutting through pastures and skirting around sheep (with red, blue, or green markings on them) and cows.
Climbing around ruined abbeys ended up being one of our favorite things to do this trip, and cutting through cow pastures was also up there.
From there we drove into the town of Cahir, while I was reading aloud about the archbishop who founded Hore Abbey in the time of Henry III, and read about the Anglo-Irish family who planned out the town of Cahir, and a little about its history. We ate lunch at a little panini and pizza place, which Robert was skeptical about but which seemed worth going to as a crowd-pleaser—Samantha had an entire kids’ sized ham pizza, Helen an entire kids’ sized cheese pizza, and Marcus an entire normal-sized chicken, pepper, and onion pita roll-up. Robert and I split a smoked salmon and prawn pizza.
Next door was the post office, so Helen got a stamp and we mailed out the postcard, which she’d written during lunch. We drove about an hour down a windy road to the coast, where we went into a tiny and free museum (the “copper coast” UNESCO heritage site visitors’ center) to learn about the geology of the region and the 19th century copper mining that occurred here. They had a boardwalk walk that went above the beach and highlights some different geological features of the area, and from the beach itself (Bunmahon beach) you can see an old copper mine and the mine manager’s house.
I sat on a rock with my book, while Marcus and Robert threw a frisbee around and Helen played in the sand and collected rocks. It was sunny and about 66, so very pleasant out.
There were a couple surfers valiantly trying over and over, a few moms with a couple kids, and otherwise it was beautiful and deserted. Helen collected a ton of rocks, and maybe we'll finally use Robert's rock polisher to shine them up at home--who knows!
On the way down here, we passed a farm stand by the side of the road we saw a teenage boy selling clearly hyper local potatoes and strawberries: we bought a big basket for 11 euros and finished it off almost immediately, Marcus and Helen consuming the most, and raving about them.
We spent over an hour at the beach, and then finished off with the playground there, which the big kids were at first dismissive of until they noticed Helen flying by on the zip wire. Then we had to tear them all away, of course.
We drove a few minutes down the road to a bog walk, where they’d put a boardwalk out in a loop over a bog about 10 minutes in and back. There were nice displays about the ecosystem and the animals of a bog, and Helen was thrilled because a bog was an item she had to check off in a bingo game in her Ireland activity book. Samantha and Marcus talked a lot about hiding dead bodies and other things in a bog, since we’d learned in the Dublin archaeological museum all about the bog bodies and the large number of treasure troves found in bogs, and we had to rehash all the details again about the victims of human sacrifice, the way they were disemboweled and had their nipples cut off (as a symbol to disbar a man from kingship). So it was a short but lively walk!
Then we drove a few more minutes into the seaside resort town of Tramore, where we walked along the boardwalk and got fish and chips from Doolys, and also (while I was there and saw them) a battered sausage meal—three battered and deep-fried sausages plus (of course) chips with vinegar and salt. Samantha was intrigued by it and ate two of the sausages happily. Apparently you could choose a dip or a drink with each meal, and I got a garlic dip and a “taco” dip. I probably would have called the taco dip Russian dressing, in both looks and taste, but that’s fine. From there we drove back toward our castle AirBnB, stopping briefly in Clonmel for a Tesco again and then for another spice bag at Riverside China House (excellent, not sweet like another we’d had, and the woman even asked “veg or no veg?” which was an easy way of making sure they didn’t randomly throw in some shredded carrots for color and thereby put off Samantha).
We stopped by the local GAA field, but I had read the schedule (sorry, the “fixtures”) wrong and tonight wasn’t the U15 hurling match, it was the U15 Gaelic football practice. Still, we watched for a couple minutes before heading home for the night. At the castle I made mini dessert parfait bowls of Tesco meringues with raspberries and custard and a square of Cadbury chocolate on top. Helen was in heaven, and Samantha and Robert demolished their bowls too. Marcus just opted for the rest of the raspberries plain.
The next morning we had a bit of a rush to leave, involving going up and down the spiral stairs many times to check all the rooms and figure out who and what was where. I made scrambled eggs with the last of yesterday’s rashers, and Helen had milk through a chocolate straw we bought in the Tesco. She ran around outside and played on the swing for the whole last half hour that Samantha and Robert called up and down to each other about cables and bathrooms, while I took out the trash and recycling, and then Marcus helped me lock up the key in the lockbox and put the combination lock back on the gate (after, of course, we had undone the string for the cows before the gate).
When we got in the car at last I fed the kids pancakes with leftover Nutella packets and peeled lots and lots of baby mandarins and passed them to Helen and Marcus.
We drove up to the north shore of Dublin for our last stop—two nights at a little B&B up here in Lusk and a tour of Butlers chocolate factory at 10:00, which was our constraint getting out the door in the morning.
Helen is the just sweetest traveling companion—she is thrilled with everything, and she tries everything, too, including an EXTREMELY olive green potato leek soup at dinner one night (the color was a little off-putting even to me, but the flavor was delicious, and Helen ate almost all of it). She also skips everywhere. It's rare to see her feet firmly on the ground in these pictures, I'm sure.
Still, the chocolate factory tour was something I’d planned especially for Helen’s sake, and what a perfect outing for her it turned out to be after all! We made it to Butler’s chocolate factory on the north side of Dublin at 9:50 for our 10:00 tour. Funny story about the tour. They offered two a day, at 10 and at 12:30, and originally I had booked us onto the 12:30 because I wanted to give us a leisurely last morning at the castle (and it was a two hours’ drive away). Then a few weeks ago they emailed me and said they’ve changed the timing of their tours and they’ll be at 10 and 1:30 from now on, so we were now on the 1:30. But we had a 3:00 reservation at the passage tombs, at Bru na Boinne, in the afternoon, and I didn’t think we could make it over there in time, so I argued a little (politely, and over email) and they argued back a little (also politely) and they kept saying there were no other options and I kept asking for other options. Eventually they said they’d squeeze us onto the 10:00 tour, but they definitely seemed reluctant, and I wasn’t confident that it would all work out perfectly. Still, we walked right in and the person at the tour desk said “you must be Christina!” (which was perhaps a little surprising…) and immediately they handed us white coats to put over our clothes so we wouldn’t get chocolate on us. They said our tour would leave from the desk in a few minutes so we used the bathrooms and then when we went back to the desk the clamor of kid voices was strong.
Apparently they had 50 first graders from a girls school, all in royal blue shorts or sweatpants and white polo shirts, with royal blue sweatshirts, and their teachers, there on a field trip to celebrate their next to last day of school. So when the chocolate people seemed reluctant to “squeeze us onto” the 10:00 tour, this was clearly in their mind! It ended up being hilarious—us, plus 25 first grade girls (they split them and took half of them through first, then 10 minutes later we started with our half of the kids). Helen was paying attention to the kids’ names and immediately nudged me and whispered “Aoife! Like from my book!” because we’ve been reading Irish legends and there was a character named that and I had had to look up the pronunciation when we were reading together. She kept comparing the kids and their class and teacher interactions with her class, and she said how nice it was that “all the misbehaving boys like John and Frankie aren’t here!” (the concept of an all-girls school had to be explained several times. “What do they DO with the boys?” she asked).
Helen blended in beautifully. First we all watched a little “fill-im” about the way chocolate grows, and is harvested, and the history of this company from the 1930s in Dublin, and then we went into a little interactive chocolate museum set of rooms, and then the guide took us onto walkways with glass windows overlooking the factory floor and talked us through about a dozen different stations.
The teachers kept apologizing but none of us minded the class, and Marcus and Samantha were just laughing so much about the whole situation. The teachers were thrilled to hear that Helen was also seven, like most of their class, and had just finished first grade. “Grand, grand!” they said. “She fits right in!” Helen eventually concluded that even without “the misbehaving boys,” this class was not better behaved than her class—far from it. The girls asked so many questions on the tour, and the tour guide, who seemed to be a pimply boy of about 19, answered them fairly patiently but with more and more humor in his responses:
- Do only girls work in the factory?” No, we have boys working here too.
- But there’s only girls down there!” Oh. The boys must all be on break then.
- What’s ‘on break’?” Taking a rest.
- Do you make any pink chocolates?” Yes, just down there if you squint.
- I can’t see!” Squint harder.
- Why do the people wear those big earmuffs?” Because it gets noisy down there and they don’t want to go deaf.
- Then why’s THAT person not wearing theirs?” They must already be deaf then.
- Where’s Willy Wonka?” In the back.
- When does he come out?” Much later, after you’re in bed.
- Does he really?” No, because he’s just in a book.
- How many chocolates do you make in a year?” About 1.8 million.
- How many chocolates do you make in six months?” Uh—about 900,000.
- How many chocolates do you make in THREE months?” I’m not doing this anymore [Here Robert said loudly, “450,000!”].
- One of your workers WAVED at me!” Good to know, I’ll have them arrested.
- Can I work here?” Yes, when you get bigger.
- Do you need to go to college to work here?” Well, you could do it as part of transition year.
- What’s transition year?” Don’t you have any big siblings or cousins you could ask that of? No? Oh. Well, it’s like a year in part of high school when you get a job somewhere and just relax at it.
Before we did that, though, the guide asked for two volunteers to come up and help her with something, and she chose Helen (sort of a shoe-in) and a little girl named Sadie from the class. They got to use white chocolate in piping bags to pipe designs onto the insides of a heart mold, but the guide made it exciting and said they only had ten seconds and organized all the other girls to count down.
Then the guide had them pour in milk chocolate over the white chocolate and then she clamped the molds together and put it in a shaker machine, and said it would take about an hour to shake and dry, so meanwhile, to show us that the elephants in front of us were hollow and were made in just the same way as the large hollow “love heart,” she gave Helen and Sadie each an extra elephant and asked them to bite off an ear on the count of three, and then they did (perfectly in sync with each other, as though they had rehearsed it), and held them up triumphantly to show that they were indeed hollow.
The employee wrapped up those for them, too, and then we spent a long time decorating our other elephants before scooting out just before the horde of little girls thundered down the stairs.
Outside, we saw a huge double-decker pink bus whose display on the front and side (it didn’t show up in pictures) read simply “schoolbus” and Helen was in awe at the beauty of it, and the privilege of getting to ride THAT to school. The driver was in it, and he came out and chatted with us and let Helen sit in the drivers seat and talked more about school buses in Ireland (he said not all of them are double decker but “loads are”).
In case you can't tell from her expression, Helen was thrilled by the bus. After that, we went into the chocolate cafe and store and bought some more chocolates, and then we got a quick Japanese lunch a couple miles away (kids’ bento boxes, plus a curry chicken for Marcus, and we discovered that “no veg” is an accepted way of ordering things everywhere here when you mean “please don’t put in any of the carrots you list in the description, and please don’t also put in any random bean sprouts or onions that you didn’t list but just were going to add anyway”).
Go back to web essays.
robertandchristina.com
was made with a Mac.
© 2023 C&R Enterprises
Email christina@robertandchristina.com
or robert@robertandchristina.com
Created: 7/2/23. Last Modified: 7/2/23.