A Cheeky Monkey and the Rock of Cashel

Continued from Part 2…

This morning after a quick trip to the local shopping centre for some essentials, we set off to visit Phoenix Park and Dublin Zoo which is less than 15 minutes from our hotel. Phoenix Park is the biggest inner-city park in Europe, and it is definitely very big, it’d probably take around an hour to walk from one side to the other.

Dublin Zoo was lovely, not as big as Chester Zoo, but still big enough that by the time we got back to the car after seeing all the different animals, we’d done 10,000 steps. First stop was the Asian and Orangutan forest enclosures. The lions were sat pretty far from the viewing points, but one of the Crested Black Macaques was very friendly and came to eat right next to me, so I got some good snaps of him.

Next was a very talkative Gibbon, but also very camera-shy, followed by some more larger more ginger orangutans, who were all very friendly, playing with each other and swinging on the trees and ropes. Then just across from the orangutans were some beautiful little lemurs (first red-ruffed, then ring-tailed), who were also very active.

Then we moved on to see some flamingos, wolves, and tigers, but they were all quite camera-shy or far away so it was difficult to get good pictures of them. Then there were some sea lions who were swimming fast past the view port, and some very big rhinos.

Then there were some lovely giraffes who came very close to us to eat some fresh grass, and some scimitar-horned oryx that are one of my favourite animals, but unfortunately they didn’t want to be photographed. Same with the zebra.

We then saw some gorillas, chimpanzees, penguins, elephants, and a bunch of other animals before going full circle and landing at the meerkat restaurant to talk to the meerkats just before leaving the zoo. Notice the rather overweight meerkat on the right hand side, we aptly named him Xanadu!

After the zoo, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and hot drink for lunch before planning the rest of the day. We decided to visit a local gallery called Draiocht which is just over 10 minutes walk away from the hotel, however despite the website saying it had two galleries, both of which were open, when we got there we were told that while they were open to the public today, they didn’t have anything in the galleries, which seemed like a bit of a waste. So we went back to the hotel again to re-plan, and decided to get on the road again and head away from the city once more, to a town called Cashel.

Cashel is about a 2-hour drive from Blanchardstown, so naturally Helen slept in the car most of the way there. When we arrived, we found the ruin of a massive fortified cathedral looking down on us and the town. The Rock of Cashel was very impressive from every angle, it’s one of the most interesting ruins we’ve seen in a while.

The 13th century cathedral adjoined a 12th century chapel (the sandstone-coloured building), and was adjacent to some 15th century residential structures. We found it odd that Cormac’s Chapel which was around 100 years older than the main cathedral building seemed to not only look newer, but also be in a much better condition than its larger brother.

Since The Rock of Cashel stood atop a small mountain, the views in every direction were incredible. No matter what side you were on, there were miles and miles of rolling fields.

Most intriguing though was the view to the West over the surrounding walls and through some of the arrow slits, where at the bottom of the hill were the ruins of Hore Abbey.

We walked down the hill to Hore Abbey (a slightly longer walk than expected, as one of the paths had been closed for repairs), and once again we found ourselves in amidst some beautiful ruins. I decided I wanted to get a picture of the abbey with the rock in the background, but didn’t realise the ground was just marshland and ended up filling my shoes with water. I thought it was worth it for the view though.

The abbey even without the view of the rock in the background was stunning, we spent a good while exploring the ruins before heading back in to the town of Cashel.

Our favourite view though were definitely the ones were old windows framed the rock above.

In the town of Cashel, we looked in a couple of shops, but by the time we’d walked around everywhere started to close up as it was getting close to 5pm. We bought some fresh socks for me to put on, my feet still swimming in marshland waters, visited a little craft shop to buy a scarf for Helen, then went to the car to get on the road back towards the hotel.

On the way back to Blanchardstown, we decided to stop half way at Kildare for some dinner, since evening was fast-approaching. We stopped in the town centre and went to a little modern Irish gastropub called Hartes, who served us a burger (for Helen) and a fillet steak (for me) served raw on a hot stone slab. I haven’t had steak like this before, I had to cook it myself, it was delicious! Cooked to perfection!

After dinner, we naturally had to have a quick walk around town and visit the local cathedral (there seems to be one on every corner in Ireland), before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Another thoroughly busy, but very enjoyable day, landing back at the hotel safe and sound, but utterly exhausted. We’ll need another holiday to recover from this one when we get home!