After the morning run, I headed over to St. Canice Cathedral as the church was opening, and had the church entirely to myself for a solid hour. After admiring the very old tombs and stain glass widows, I paid an extra 2 euros to climb the watch tower that dates from 849 A.D. It was quite the set of steep stairs, and as tough as climbing up was, coming down was a little frightening.
The views from the top were impressive, and I was lucky to have a bright, clear sunny day for my visit. After climbing down, I grabbed a half-Irish breakfast and then went to the Smithwicks brewery for a tour. The Smithwicks brewery is 300 years old, but beer brewing in Ireland is believed to have formally taken hold in a style common to today's beers at the abbey on Smithwicks' site in the 1200s. Our tour guide, Ronan, had worked at Smithwicks for over 30 years, and gave quite a good tour. Unlike the Guinness tour, we were able to actually go into the brewery to see the process and the equipment. Of course, the best part of the tour was the end when Ronan poured us a proper pint of Smithwicks, which is a slow process but creates a beer with an impressive head that reminded me of a top of a soufflé.
After the tour, I had a few more hours to stroll the city before grabbing a train ride back to Dublin. My hostel in Dublin was fantastic, with a great sitting area and rather nice rooms. By last night I was feeling a bit saturated, both of Irish beer and sightseeing, and I decided to unwind at the hostel to simply relax rather than do more sightseeing. I spent the evening watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with other hostelers, and met a very interesting couple, Sarah and Aaron, from Oklahoma. Before calling it a night I decided to grab one last pint of Guinness in Ireland with them (so much for saturation). I would have liked to have chatted with them more, but my flight to Brussels was at 6.50am the next morning and it was definitely time to get to bed.
Ireland was great, I'm a bit sad to be leaving such a fun country. But the good news is that I finally stopped nearly bumping into people on sidewalks by remembering to yield to the left -- cars drive on the left, people walk on the left. Finally got it.
Other general musings on Ireland:
1. Obama is insanely popular which is somewhat difficult to understand. But the Irish people seem to think he's wonderful, as I learned from several conversations with the locals I met.
2. I had no idea the Irish were such smokers. In Kilkenny, I saw two young women who were collecting change in tin cans for the Irish Lung Cancer Society taking a smoke break. The Irish government recently jacked up the taxes on cigarettes, and they are now quite expensive. To get around this, smokers are instead buying loose tobacco (which is far cheaper) and rolling their own unfiltered cigarettes. I don't know what the exact economic term for this is, but it would definitely go under the fail column.
3. Many of the discussions I had with locals talked about the recession in Ireland and if the US economy was improving. From what I gathered, things in Ireland aren't desperate but are still rough. The pubs in particular have suffered -- with beers averaging about 4-5 euros, people are staying home more and pubs are struggling.
4. Everyone here understands me with no problems, even given how fast I speak, and I have a much harder time understanding them with an Irish accent. This is the first time in my life this has ever been true. I blame Hollywood.
That's about it. I'm on my way to Belgium now and looking forward to eating too much chocolate and indulging in some waffles. More pictures of Kilkenny and Cork are up here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/105899454615652413823/CorkAndKilkenny?feat=directlink
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