Adventures in Deutschland: Day 57

Monday morning we said good-bye to Bunratty, packed the car, and headed south. We stopped in a small town called Adare. Our guide book described it as a beautiful small town and it was on our way to Killarney where we'd spend the next three nights so we thought we'd see what it had to offer. We drove in to town via the one lane road that runs along side the Adare golf course and the ruins of the old Adare Castle. As soon as we passed the golf course, we were greeted by brightly colored buildings with hanging flower baskets and pretty little signs. It was like something straight out of a movie. Adare is known as the prettiest town in Ireland. Critics call it the prettiest English town in Ireland. Either way, it was certainly the prettiest town we saw.

We immediately headed to the town's tourist office where we were greeted with traditional Irish hospitality. The lady at the front desk gave us a free map, gave us ideas of what to visit, and walked out the door with us to point us in the right direction, marking up our map as she showed us where to go. We walked along the main street in town past brightly painted houses with large thatched roofs and past the city park until we came to the ruins of a Trinitarian Monastery. This religious order was founded in order to buy back hostages from the crusades. It's funny to think of people joining an order with this purpose, but I guess it must have been needed at that time. The monastery itself was was a monsterous stone structure. We were able to go into the church which was very plain stone with newly tiled floors.

We walked a bit further and found an old Augustinian Monastery that had been abandoned before the early 1500s. It (along with the other monastery) now houses a school. We were able to walk through the halls lining the inner courtyard of the monastery where monks would have walked silently while they prayed centuries ago. We also were able to visit the church which is now Anglican and has been completely modernized. They put dry wall over the old stone, red carpet over the old flooring, and very modern stained glass windows along the walls for light. The church had a great informational pamphlet that told all about how a general and his men stayed in this monastery in the 1500s during some famous battle and how the journal of the general wrote that the building was in ruins. Much of it was restored in the 1800s including the arched ceilings to the passages we had just wandered through. While we were visiting this church, Therese decided to visit a prayer corner and knelt down, folded her hands, and "prayed." Only our two year old. Note that she did not do this in any of the dozens of Catholic churches we visited...

After visiting the second monastery we walked along the river and back to the little stores lining the main road. We got two sandwiches from a nice little shop and a few pieces of fruit from the grocery store and had a picnic lunch on a green bench by the visitor's center. Therese was VERY excited to eat on the bench.

After eating, we were back in the car and on our way to Killarney. The drive was an easy one despite the onslaught of pouring rain. Therese fell asleep as we approached Killarney so we took our time driving through the downtown section of the city before going to our new B&B, Woodlands. Woodlands was located just down the street from the cathedral and on the road leading to the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula, two popular tourist destinations. We were a little nervous about the B&B because we picked it solely based on its high rating and positive reviews on Trip Advisor. The Woodlands website is terrible - just one page with very little information and cheesy pictures of people on horseback. I would have never picked it on my own, but the ratings were high and the price was right. As we drove up to the place I started getting really nervous. It was not much to look at from the front. Todd went inside to talk to get our keys only to come back empty-handed. The room wouldn't be ready for another hour. Frustrated by this and the cold rain, we went to the nearby cathedral for a place to visit while staying dry. The cathedral was beautiful. It had incredibly high, arched ceilings and was made of gray stone. There was a baptistry room to the side that was covered in mosaics formed from tiny tiles. This cathedral had been founded in the early 1800s but building was put on hold as Ireland faced famine during which the church served as a place for the sick to be cared for. Building was resumed a few years later after this part of Ireland lost around 1/3 of its population. While the entire cathedral was beautiful, I was particularly drawn to a small section beside the right side of the altar. Here there was a stone statue of St. Therese of Lisieux- our Therese's namesake- holding flowers. She was surrounded by devotional candles lit beside a large prayer. It was a great opportunity to show Therese this "other Therese" and to explain to her why they have the same name.

After the cathedral we were able to get into our room at the B&B. The room was huge. It had a section for the bed and Pack-n-Play (which we subsequently moved as far away from the bed as possible) and a section for lounging around. The owner had even put a high chair in the room for us to use. While the decorations and fixtures in the room gave the definite impression that it hadn't been updated in a few decades, it was comfortable enough. The sheets were an awful pink clashing with the orange comforter and green carpet, but they kept us plenty warm. We put Reese's crib in the back corner of the room and hung our green sheet in front of it so she couldn't see us as is our custom (if she wakes up in the middle of the night and sees us, she wants immediately thinks it's time to play and won't go back to sleep). Anyhow, after a light dinner of salad and soup, we put Therese in her crib and pretended like we were leaving the room only to sneak back to our bed behind the sheet in order to watch a movie on the computer. After about 30 minutes of silence punctuated by the occasional sound of blankets moving, a little hand tugged on the green sheet and a little head popped up and Reese exclaimed,"Daddy!" She was so excited by her discovery. Todd put her back down and moved the sheet a little further away from her crib:-).