Sunday, July 7, 2013

Who You Callin' A Hore?

DAY FOUR

It was time to leave Inistioge and head to County Kerry.

The road was soon a blessed two lanes...


... as we made our way to our midday pit-stop, the Rock of Cashel.


It should be noted that in the tiny cafe at the foot of the Rock of Cashel 
we had our first contact with a group of...
well, not Ugly Americans, but certainly Loud Americans.


I was already self-conscious about my American accent,
because while the lovely lilt of the Irish sounded to my ears
as though they should all look like this...


... I, on the other, felt that to them I must appear like this:


So I was glad to escape the din of the cafe and head up the hill to the castle.

And this was a CASTLE.




I could feel the agreeable weight of history.





I love this picture of me.


 It looks like a still from some USA Network procedural  named "Coldstone."  
(There would be tie-ins with Coldstone Creamery, natch.)
I'm a psychic, but I can only get a reading whilst among historical sites.
(So there's an educational element to it.)
 I catch the perps with the help of my trusty, fresh-out-of-college assistant;
she majored in history and gives me grief 
for not knowing more about stuff like The War of the Roses.


Aaaaanyway...

As we took photos outside...



... The Sweet Man pointed out the abbey at the bottom of the hill.


"We should go there!  Rick Steves says no one goes there!" he said,
so down the hill we trekked.


To my delight (and The Girl's sighing disgust)
the abbey had a name that lent itself to many juvenile jokes:


(And yes, I'm aware of the irony of my getting huffy about "Loud Americans"
when I can't stop from making jokes like a twelve-year-old boy.)

There were indeed only a handful of people visiting Who You Callin' A Hore Abbey (see?)
and we explored the quiet grounds, snapping pictures.



Look!  A crow!


 There was a tiny, seemingly-abandoned graveyard...


and then, surprisingly, a soldier's grave from 1917 that had been maintained:

  
 The Sweet Man snapped this photo of us...


... which looked, composition-wise, oddly familiar.

Hmmm...




 There we go!

It was time to head out.
After a few hours, we landed at our destination in Gortaleen,  at this place:




 ***   ***   ***   ***   ***


Sheep!  Donkeys!  Baby Goooooats!!


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