Jack & Jo's European Adventure: Kilkenny

We had some great craic in Kilkenny, after recovering from our first night at Tynan's Bar, we managed to visit some fantastic historical sites like "Rothe House" and "St. Canices's Cathedral and Tower" various pubs and restaurants, the place and the people were so welcoming a really great place to visit and one I'd like to return to one day.

One place I had read about I'd wanted to see was "The hole in the wall" a tavern come theater, I was later to find we had walk past it so many times in the couple of days we were there. When I did find it we were walking around town looking for a place to drink at and a bite to eat and I sort of stumbled upon it quite by accident, only to find it was closed, disappointed we began to walk away when we heard a voice calling out from behind closed doors. It was the proprietor Michael and he invited us into this tiny little area which was the tavern, he turned on some lights, and some music, then offered us some German beer, once we were set up with our drinks he commenced telling us the history of the beautiful little tavern. Both it and he were fascinating to say the least and we so enjoyed the experience, as luck would have it for Michael, while we were intently listening to his stories a group of 12 or so Americans came in looking for a drink, a good thing as he had been telling us it had been so quiet and he needed the business.

We loved the food in Ireland, so many of the pubs we ate at provided us with good wholesome meals which felt like we were at Mum's place for dinner, so nice, though Jo could not get over the way each and every meal she ordered came with chips or fries, something she does not eat a lot of normally, though the chips in Ireland are the best we have ever had. She was so pleased to be heading to Paris, just to get a meal without chips, you can just imagine the laughter when the first meal she ordered Minced steak with an egg, came with, you guessed it chips!

I left Ireland with mixed emotions, sad to leave such a beautiful place but at the same time so excited to be going to Paris. The trip to Paris took us 12 hours in total, including 2 hours to get from Kilkenny to the airport in Dublin, an hour and a half flight to get to Copenhagen with a lay over of the same duration, then an hour and a half flight to Paris followed by a couple of hours waiting for baggage and getting the train to the city, a long day. Why go by Copenhagen? because the flights were a quarter of the price of the opposition and I had no idea how far away Copenhagen was from Dublin, nor that it was in the wrong direction, but savings were worth it and we got there eventually.