3/9 part 1 - Horses and Japanese Gardens

The breakfast buffet at the hotel turned out to be a very good thing. It included scrambled eggs, beans, toast, lots of cheeses, Irish breakfast sausage, grilled tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, cereals, assortment of rolls and fluffy pastries with jams and butter, fresh fruit and juices, and black and white puddings. Black pudding is a type of sausage in natural casings which can be made with pork or beef suet, cereal filler, and pork blood. White pudding is the same, only without the blood. It looks similar to our patty sausage but doesn't have the sage flavoring. Along with all this you can have coffee or tea. Randy and I loved the tea, served with milk and rough little sugar cubes.

Our waitress was a cheerful sort, singing "Molly Malone" and a few other songs to us. After breakfast we bundled up in our coats and headed for the bus. For awhile we thought we had been misdirected - our names were not on the seating chart taped to the bus door window. When Brendan showed up, we sorted it out - whatever list he used to fill in it was showing our middle names! As far at the seating chart was concerned, we were Ray and Sue for most of the trip.

Brendan drove us to our next destination. We discovered that in words with "th", only the "t' is pronounced. For example, "three trees" became "tee trees". Brendan knew he did this and facetiously warned us not to laugh at him, so of course we did.

Let's see....some of the things that Brendan told us today:

In 795 the Vikings started raiding Ireland. And in 1169 the deposed King of Leinster asked England's King Henry II for help regaining his kingdom. What he didn't know was that they would stay!

He said that Hurling is a game invented by the Irish so they could play something entirely different that what the English played. I am not sure I heard him right because there is a reference to hurling in Irish law as far back as the 5th century. 

He told us that St. Patrick, who was born in 432, never banished snakes from Ireland because there weren't any. Nowadays with so many people owing exotic pet and releasing the ones they can't handle, that isn't true anymore. But St. Patrick is hugely important in Ireland. March 17th is his feast day, and until very recently it was more of a holy day than a holiday. Among other thing, pubs were closed on that day.

And "publicans" refers to pub owners.

He expanded on why he doesn't drink during his bus-driving months of April thru November. A friend of his drank 5 to 6 pints one evening (not an unusual event around here). The next day he drove to work and was stopped, and the Breathalyzer registered him as still drunk. They call it "drink driving", not "drunk driving" but it still carries a 2 year driving ban and a big fine. Using your phone while driving will cost you 1,000 euros and 5 points. (Brendan pronounces "points" like "pints" so this was pretty confusing until we realized what he meant). You can challenge this in court but the rule is that if you lose, the fine and points will be doubled, so most people don't. That rule was established to lessen the burden on the courts, and it seems to work.

He drove us through the town of Kildera, which means "Church of Dera" and spoke more about when, in the 12th century, Cromwell destroyed most Catholic churches.

Trees used to cover 95% of the land and now they cover just 12%.

He told us that the famous horse De Nolly used to belong to a farmer, not a breeder, but I may have gotten the name wrong because I can't find a reference to it.

By then we were at the National Stud and Japanese Gardens. Seems like an odd combination but William Hall, the guy who started his stud farm here, loved Eastern culture too. When he gave it all to the crown in 1915, it became the National Stud Farm. Its most famous resident is Invincible Spirit, born in 1997. He won some serious races before settling down at the Stud farm, where he makes an amazing amount of money for doing the other job he loves. Currently he earns 120,000 euros each time he makes a mare pregnant. When we saw him he was quietly chowing down - probably resting up.

Then our walking tour headed out to the fields where the mares and foals were. And oh, how beautiful they were!

They were used to people so they mostly stayed focused on what they were doing, but some came by to say hello.

The foals were obviously curious about us but they stayed close to mama.

Except for one fellow, still in his winter coat, who decided Randy looked like a good guy to meet.

There was a big boned, long-haired mare in the fields with a foal. he obviously wasn't a Thoroughbred and the guide told us that she was a foster mom, nursing and raising someone else's foal. Sweet mama!

I could have stayed here all day. Rose (who loved taking photos, too) and I were the last ones to leave and we moved on only when the rest of the group was already out of sight. The Japanese Gardens were in another section of the farm. It was a lovely, peaceful place, and we imagine that later in the year, when everything is in bloom, it will be breathtaking.

Next it was time to go visit the town of Kilkenny.