Oct 5th

Today we toured all of Kilkenny by foot passing the Smithwhick’s brewery, multiple churches, various pubs, and the residence of Lady Alice Kettell. In 1325, the Church convicted Alice of Witchcraft. Alice lent money to people and collected interest, which the church frowned upon in those times. To secure her money and guarantee future business she successfully married the four bankers in Kilkenny. One after the other, they mysteriously died and she remarried. Turns out, likely she poisoned them with arsenic and never practiced Witchcraft at all. Researchers believe this because all the victim’s hair and nails fell off before they croaked. If McCain’s or Dr. Phil’s nails fall off we know what happened –Witchcraft.

Next we toured the Butler’s Norman style Kilkenny Castle. The castle looked like straight out of the movies. In front of the Castle a group of Irish dancing middle aged men dressed in green with bells attached to them danced to the beat of banjos, guitars, and drums. I decided to ask the dancers for a picture while a crowd watched my face turn red in embarrassment. I covered my embarrassment with a smirk and got a chuckle out of most people. Unfortunately, only a few of the dancers posed with me.

Wish I toured these castles in grade school, because my Lego castles would’ve dominated, instead of getting demolished by Mark’s spaceships. The glorious Kilkenny Castle tops the list for the best castle I’ve seen so far.
During the tour we learned the boys of royalty and rich wore dresses and make up until around 7-years of age. I started to understand why the little boys who grew up to take the Crown enforced such crazy rules. I mean, I’d be pretty messed up too if I grew up as a cross dresser. (Oh wait, until I was 7-years-old my siblings played “farm”, called me a cow, and kicked me. On top of that, I wore pink snow pants hand-me-downs from Kelli to save money). Hope everything works out for me… The little boys wore dresses to blend in with the girls, protecting them from being kidnapped by enemies interested in killing the heir to the throne.

After the castle the group drove to Dunbar cave. We raced down 350 steps into the cave and looked at all the stalactites and stalagmites. The guide told us how the people of the village hid in the depths of the cave while enemies burned the town to the ground. The enemies refused to go into the cave, because it was thought to be an entrance to hell. The Vikings knew better and held no belief in hell allowing them to take over the village and enslave to people.

We bought groceries and drove back to the cottages after Dunbar Cave. I took meat orders for tomorrow, blogged, and tried to call people (Skype isn’t working right now for some reason), and hit the hay.