Trip to Kilkenny

After many doubts and logistics (...you try to hire a car in Ireland) we were on our way to county Kilkenny. (we were desperate to go somewhere so we were just looking for a nice B&B and decided Kilkenny is the destination).

Packing almost every snack under our hands we went on our way. The usual Aircoach to the Airport to pick the bus and off we go.

Day 1:
As this was the first time for Ruthie driving outside of Malta we were quite nervous. It's different driving on a proper Island rather than on a small ROCK (14x27km - Malta). But after 15 minutes and she ruled the road.

We drived all the way to Kilkenny stopped for lunch in Carlow and finally made a huge detour to get to the small village called Ballyraggot. Our lovely host Laura took care for us and welcomed us into her lovely B&B.

She gave us few tips and after a while we were on our way to Castlecomer. Another small village but yet with such a great atmosphere. Despite its name we couldn't find the castle in it :) We just went into the wood where we found a nice Fishing lakes. Then we did our way to Kilkenny. A nice small town with a huge and very impressive Castle. We got there after the openning hours but were still able to have a walk around the Caslte's gardens.

We entered a nice Restaurant "Italian connection" which turned to be a very known and tasety. By the end of dinner we were already wrecked. All we wanted was to sleep. Ruth drove us to Ballyraggot which was around 22 minutes away.
We got our showers and fell asleep.

Day 2:
We woke up after a very tight sleep. Our lovely B&B lady Laura made us breakfast (we even had menus) and we were on our way towards Waterford (with few stops).
We first stopped in a place called Woodstock. It's a very nice man made woods from the viktorian period. The garden was lately renovated.

The place is just above the amazing valley of the town Inistioge.

From there we headed south to Waterford. The weather was sunny and the streets were busy. We decided to stay away from the crowd, spotted a small lake on the map and headed there. The only problem was we had no clue how it would be like. After half an hour drive we figured it was a very small lake without any proper access to it. At this point all we wanted was to get some rest. We were on the road for too long. We found a shopping center, got into a coffee shop and spent more than an hour there.
Since it was still quite early we had another look at the map and headed to a place called Kells Priory. It's a priory from the 11th century. It was absolutly beautiful. Unexpectedly there was no admission and was just near a gorgeous river.