After arriving in Ireland, I had a few hours to fill before I could check into the cottage. A few minutes outside of Shannon is a town called Bunratty that has a castle … Bunratty Castle. Sara and I stopped there on our last day in June. But we were tired, it was getting late; we simply took a few photos and headed to the hotel.
My day started out cold and rainy. After 20 hours of traveling, it was a good way to walk away the fog. In addition to the castle, there is also a village attached to it with a variety of houses, a farm, etc.
The castle was interesting. They allow you to go in and walk around. While they have added indoor plumbing in a few places, they have not altered most of the architecture. I anticipated that they would have widened or straightened out the steps, but they didn’t. In the US, they would have simply blocked them off and not permitted access. I love the fact that we can be trusted to climb the circular, narrow, stone steps. I walked up to the North Solaris at the top and explored multiple floors.
From there, it was walking the grounds. I have decided to take photos of windows and doors during this trip. Hmmm … some possibility there. At the very end, there was a mini village. It was decorated for Christmas, obviously for a weekend mini festival. They even used white batting; cutting it to make it look like snow patches on the roofs. Ingenuity!
Here are photos for the day:
Location via Google Maps: