Finishing Up Our Time in Ireland

After the cliffs, we headed to Limerick for the night.  It was a short drive away from the cliffs.  We explored the city a little, grabbed a bite to eat at a local sandwich shop called, O'Briens.  It was really good.  The next morning we woke up to explore the city a little more, and go to King John's Castle.  The front desk thought it might have been closed on Sundays, so we were initially bummed.  After walking over to the castle to snap a few photos, a lady told us that they were open but just had a power outage.  Many of the surrounding buildings were out of power, so I'm not sure if it was because of wind or what.

View of King John's Castle from across the very full River Shannon. They had many sections of the viewing points closed down due to high rising water

Either way, we walked around a little more to try to find a place for breakfast.  We were getting pretty annoyed that no place was open for breakfast...even McDonald's and Costa (a local coffee shop).  Not sure what was going around, we finally found Subway...but they didn't have breakfast either.  BLT for breakfast...sure, why not?! Around 11:00 all of the restaurants were opening back up...weird.

Beautiful church and cemetery

We made it back over to the castle, and we were glad we did as it was a pretty cool experience. Part of it was still shut down due to the power outage, but we were able to see the castle grounds which was all we really wanted to see.  It reminded us a lot of Connor Prairie as they had little rooms set up like they did back in those days.  They also had video life size people who explained each room when you touched an object. We have seen these screens before, but we could not put our finger on where we have seen them before. Can anyone help us out? Our thoughts were Stirling Castle...but wasn't quite sure.  It is sort of driving me crazy.

In the kitchen

Inner walls of the castle

We were able to climb the two small towers that had beautiful views of Limerick. We stayed for about an hour, then headed back to the hotel before checking out of the hotel. Next up on our list was some warm Irish stew.  It definitely hit the spot!

 This view is from the opposite side of the city centre. Jeff and I were amazed because if you look closely the city comes to a complete stop. From there is land and mountains.

 The view of the city, although our heads are blocking it...

We jumped in the car to head to the beautiful town of Adare, Ireland.  Adorable is an understatement of the small quaint city.  We didn't do much here but walk around to see the cuteness.

 Adorable houses on Main Street

We made it to the Adare Manor Hotel & Golf Resort.  It made us pretty jealous as that was one of quite a few golf courses we had seen in the last day.  We wished we had our clubs so we could have played a round...although I'm sure the wind would have been quite a challenge.  Either way, the manor was beautiful.  It would have been like staying in a castle for sure.  We walked around the grounds for a little, and then headed back.  We took the scenic route to the airport, although it got dark pretty quickly...so we didn't see much. Jeff and I's flight was delayed so we didn't get back to Manchester until around 11:30, and home by 1:00 AM.  Jeff was pretty bummed because he didn't get to watch the Colts game live.  He came home to watch the recording on Monday evening after work.  Talk about avoiding the internet all day...yowza.

 The washing pool. Women used to come here to wash their families clothes.

Adare Manor Hotel & Golf Resort

On to the next adventure...