Getting there...

We decided to break our journey south in County Roscommon in a town called Boyle. We found a wonderful B&B directly next door to Boyle Abbey - it was a huge old house with a river and things! So we got some food and spent the evening playing cards and drinking tea in the living room in front of a peat fire. Next day we continued south, stopping to check out Roscommon Castle - in ruins, obviously, but apparently a popular play place for children and picnic place for others - and passing through Athlone (our only traffic jam) before heading to Clonmacnoise Monastery, an old settlement that was once a great center of learning before it was destroyed in multiple attacks way back in the day. It's a really cool place, with all sorts of buildings, graves, a round tower, and the resting place of St. Kieran/Ciaran. You can even still walk part of the centuries-old pilgrim's path. We were all in photographic heaven, as per usual, and we also watched an informative (albeit animated) video about the place.

Next to it, on a hill, there's an old castle in ruins, so Tine and I tramped across a cow field to see it - totally cool! It was set on a hill, but between where we stood and where it stood a huge trench had been dug for extra fortification. All of this overlooks the River Shannon, and it was a really neat place. Our next (and most important) destination was the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary, which is the understood ancestral homeground of the Meagher family. We got there in the evening, and as we rounded a curve on the mountain we could see it silhouetted in the fog. Awesome. We found a nice little B&B (Peggy O'Neill's) with a ruin in the backyard and settled in for the night. Mary and I set out to explore the town and pick up some food (*Helen voice* some bread and some cheese) while Tine remained behind, and we spent a pleasant evening. Next day, the Rock! And I don't mean Dwayne Johnson... had I seen him, I would have been afraid. Anyway, we went in to explore. Originally a castle, it was gifted to the church, so now all the buildings there are the ruins of the Bishop's residence, a large church (might have been a cathedral), a chapel, and a round tower. Both the church and chapel used to be beautifully decorated with murals and things, but under Cromwell they were all whitewashed over and have been lost, but within the past decade or so they've been finding more and more behind the layers of Cromwell, so there's one of the Crucifixion that you can see in the church and a few small things in the chapel. There's also an old sarcophagus and lots of cool carving in the chapel. Much exploring and photographing was done to our great satisfaction. Our final destination - Killarney!