so we danced on the street corner

Oh man was this a fun day!

Last Friday I went to Kilkenny with Patrick, Skyler, and Fabs.

Kilkenny is a town about 75 miles southwest of Dublin by car.

We of course took the train for the day trip.

We thought it best to take the earliest train out and the 2nd to last train coming back.

It would give us the most time to explore. (edit: hahaha no it wouldn't!!)

What we didn't think about was how god damn early that meant getting up.

Our train left at 7:20am and i was woken up with a start at 6:50. Mind you, the train station is many blocks away 3/4 of a mile to be exact, and by the time we were all in the lobby we had about 24 minutes until the train left.

We ran. Poor Fabs is a smoker, and he just gave up and walked after a point.

I ended up running ahead with the ticket confirmation numbers, getting the tickets, meeting up haphazardly with the group with 56 seconds to go, running down the platform and jumping on the train at the last second. Not even joking.

It was a great way to start the day. As Skyler put it, "now that we've used up all our shitty luck it's going to be a great day!"

And it was.

I thought Kilkenny was great! It was a great size, and it seemed to have a lot going on. We got there pretty early, and people seemed to be walking to work still.

(the Kilkenny commute)

If you were standing in the spot where the picture above was taken, and you turned around you would be this:

This is Kilkenny Castle, and the first really castley looking castle i've seen yet.

We explored a bit and discovered that they had a tea room. While we waited for the tour(that we ended up opting out of) to start, we got tea in the castles old kitchen.

(i got palace garden tea)

After deciding that we'd rather explore more of the town and area instead of taking a tour of very nice looking rooms, we took off into Kilkenny.

As we walked down the main drag we saw a "man shop", and of course immediately entered.

This, as it turns out, is just a mens clothing store. Normally i would have lost interest upon entering, but this clothing store was full of amazing tweed jackets, Sherlock Holmes pipes, and three piece suits. We looked around a little and wound up talking to this little old man who i took to be the owner. He seemed to want to talk to us forever, and ended up telling us basically the whole history of Kilkenny in about 5 minutes. "my father came here during the great potato famine from Dublin to work on St. Mary's Cathedral. He was a stone mason, and he came because there was work, which meant food".

He was a cool dude, and was very helpful in suggesting some places to check out.

Next we wandered around Kilkenny's back allies and discovered the Black Abby. Outside the Abby a crazy lady feeding stray cats tunafish and parked illegally told us about St. Canice's Cathedral (below), and the afore mentioned St. Mary's (which was so large it can be seen from almost anywhere in town)

This place had a great graveyard, and sat atop a big hill. We learned later on that it was 1200 years old. Really old.

Next we went and explored St Mary's, but only for a bit because earlier we had purchased tickets to tour the Smithwick's brewery.

This ended up being a great time.

At first our guide Ronan was a bit overzealous with the history of the Smithwicks family.

It seemed like we were standing there in a circle for like 45 minutes hearing about how Edward Smithwick was such a great guy, and how he did SOOOoooOOOo much for the community of Kilkenny. It's not that it wasn't true, or impressive, it was just boring!

We would soon realize that all the stuff that Ronan had told us would some into play during the walking part of the tour. Once we started moving around the brewery all the stuff he had just taken forever to explain came to life. All the different generations of Smithwick influence became very obvious and we then understood why he had gone into such depth.

We saw this old shell of an abby right in the middle of the brewery.

It's a Franciscan abby, and it turns out, not coincidentally, that Smithwicks is a Franciscan style beer. Next to the abby there was a newer chapel where Ronan told us was the perfect place to say an "Ale Mary". Very funny at the time.

We also got to see the actual modern brewery and all the good stuff that goes along with that.

Before walking into the building that housed the 7 or 8, million pint hoppers, Ronan said to us, "in the unlikely event that we have a gusher, which is when a pipe bursts and all million pints come pouring out of a hopper, i guarantee your safety, but please, don't worry about me, in fact, just leave me. Many a night i've dreamt of reaching a state of nirvana while being consumed by the fizzy goodness of Smithwicks, sometimes it even helps me fall asleep."

The guy likes his Smithwicks, what can i say?

So much so that he took about 20-30 minutes to pour 9 pints. He said that part of the tour was experiencing a craft pour, where you fill the glass in little increments so that the bubbles in the head stay very tiny, and in turn the head stays extra thick.

(Craft pours, with the biggest Smithwicks fan i've ever met. Ronan)

I must admit however, the final product was a work of art, and tasted just as good as it looks.

Kilkenny was a great time. I'd go back in a second.

We had some extra time at the end of the day and ended up walking along the river. By the time we reached the town again it was getting dark. We really did get a full Kilkenny day.

(Cool well)

Till next time

be happy

Andy