Entries about o'dea

First, we went to a shop in Liscannor to buy some gifts for people. Catherine found a couple pieces of jewelry to buy. A shamrock necklace and a St. Brigid's cross. Here, she's wearing the St. Brigid's cross.

Classic-looking haystacks. Usually we see perfectly square or round ones, not ones that appear this "natural."

We stopped to visit the old cathedral of Kilfenora. This tiny diocese is run by the Bishop of Galway now, but is supposedly technically without a bishop, supposedly making the pope the bishop here. Whether this is canonically accurate is debatable. There are several High Crosses here, and the ruins of an old cathedral, part of which is now a Church of Ireland church. It was a very interested place to see. Daniel had seen it when he was here last, and wanted to show it to Catherine.

The village of Corofin. We were thinking of having lunch here, but there was a horse festival that day and the village was very crowded with nowhere to park.

We visited Dysert O'Dea Castle. Daniel had visited some of the sites here, but not the castle which was closed when he came here last. These show the views from the top, as well as the workshop in the castle. This castle is intereting as it actually belongs to a member of the O'Dea family who lives in Michigan.

There's a small exhibit in the castle of objects related to various risings, especially 1916. There are some weapons which were used in 1916, and letters and other documents of people involved. It was very interesting, especially as Catherine had been reading a book on the Easter Rising.

This is a murder hole, where defenders could drop objects on invaders from above. Strangely enough, it is located in the chapel.
A person risking her life by standing under the murder hole.

More views of the castle.

We had lunch at a pub in Ennis called Dan O'Connell's. Co. Clare was playing Co. Roscommon in Gaelic Football that day, and the game was on. The pub was crowded with people watching the game. It was fun, but we didn't stay and watch the whole game as we had places to be. We wanted to visit Adare Castle, which was on our heritage card. When we arrived, however, they were closed for a wedding (which is impressive...we wondered whose wedding it was to close down a public heritage site.). We moved on from Adare and, since we had some extra time, headed to Killlarney to see Ross Castle before going to the place we were staying.

Ross Castle was closed by the time we got there, but it was still an interesting place to visit. We walked over to the lake and got as close as we could to the castle. It was much larger than most of the castles we have seen.

A cute dog we saw on our walk back from the castle.

Some of the beautiful hills of Co. Kerry. Catherine pointed out that the green is particularly green in Kerry, and started referring to the color as "green green."

We stopped at a small pub/disco bar for dinner.

Some more pictures of the beautiful scenery as we drove from Killarney to Co. Cork.

When we were planning our trip, Catherine noticed that there is a village called Bweeng in Co. Cork. She wanted to go there, and looked forward to "Bweeng Day." Today was Bweeng Day. These two pictures show the metropolis in all its glory: a post office, and a selfie in the church car park. We didn't really stop in Bweeng because it was getting late and we had to move on to Dromohane where we were staying.

The sunset over Dromohane. Our hosts there were wonderful. We had a nice tea and a lengthy conversation about Irish and American politics and current events. They were very nice and helpful hosts, and the room at their house was a perfect place to stay. It is a dairy farm, and the owner also has seven German shepherds. Also, the host had a very strong Cork accent. At first, Catherine thought he was from the Netherlands.