We started waking up around 7:30am but weren’t really good at it — taking until nearly 9:30am to get downstairs for our 9:00am breakfast reservation. Oops. Breakfast was at the same place we ate the night before. They had both Continental and Full Irish options — guess which I opted for. While I had a full Irish breakfast of sausages, bacon (more like country ham), a fried egg over medium, hash browns, and baked beans — having opted out of the roasted half-tomato and pudding (the Irish do strange things with pudding), Michelle had a bacon, tomato, and cheese frittata. Hers was quite good, mine was above average. She had Irish breakfast tea and I had coffee. Tasty.
Before heading back to the room I reported that our AC didn’t seem to work and the thermostat was flashing a “E04” code. The person at the desk promised to send someone up to look at it. It had gotten quite warm in the room last night and luckily there was a rotary desk fan to help keep things cool. Once back in the room we packed up our backpack with cameras and the like and headed out to the north toward the river.
The walk along the River Shannon was quite pleasant as there was a nice pedestrian walkway and several small parks like one at Arthur’s Quay. The walkway ended at a small one-land road. There was a truck going beep-beep-beep backing up in this road. It was then that we realized that Limerick has it’s own version of the 11foot8, the bridge in Durham that eats trucks. Seriously, check it out on YouTube. This driver, having seen the danger, was having none of it. Just beyond the bridge were these adorable painted posts made up to look like mermaids, sharks, police officers (“garda”), etc.
A little distance beyond was the rear of The Hunt Museum which is supposed to be a nice visit on a rainy day. No rainy day today, though — a moderate breeze, 60s, and partly cloudy skies — perfect! Regardless, we did stop for a restroom break at the museum. Apparently there must have been some incident just before we arrived. When we entered there was a police car and some officers asking questions of someone and on the way out that person was filling out paperwork with an officer.
After passing a rowing club and a dock with a bright red rescue boat we crossed a pedestrian bridge onto King’s Island. We could see that there must be quite the tidal difference even this far up the river as there were exposed mudflats with many shorebirds and the watermark was a good four or so feet higher. King’s Island is where the Vikings first settled in the area and later where the pre-Norman king of the area built his fortress as well as a church, St. Mary’s Cathedral, built in 1168. Sadly we weren’t able to go in due to an ongoing service but I did enjoy taking some pictures. Normally I’m one to shy way from taking pictures of graves but these were Irish crosses with ivy growing on them. I mean, c’mon!
We walked past a few modern town administration buildings and into the entrance to King John’s Castle, located in adjacent Alms Widows Houses build in 1691. The museum was quite good. Though it had few artifacts it did a great job of explaining the history of the castle and Limerick. I’ll spare you all the details but essentially the Vikings settled in the 800s and by the late 1100s had intermarried with the non-Viking population. Ireland had been in a golden age from the 600s as the center of monastic learning in the Western world (basically, if the knowledge is from Latin Ireland preserved it, Greek the Byzantines). Well, an Irish lord in the middle of the island lost his lands and invited the English (Norman) King Henry II in to help him restore his power in the late 1100s. Bye-bye golden age.
Henry’s son Richard (the Lionhearted) became King of England on Henry’s death and his brother John became Lord of Ireland. On Richard’s death he became King of England and had a castle built in Limerick on King’s Island. It wasn’t finished for over a century and in its initial configuration just protected from attacks to the north. As “Irish Town” grew to the south protection was eventually added to that side to protect against any attacks. Curiously for a castle it didn’t see much action in the Medieval age but rather made up for this relative calm with loads of actions in the 1600s!
In the late 1500s Henry VIII (he of many headless wives) was prepared to just chuck this whole “Lord of Ireland” thing. However, a rebellion among the Catholic Irish being unhappy with England going Protestant had to be quelled, leading to eventually England committing whole-heartedly for suppressing Ireland rather than the more hands-off approach of the prior 300 or 400 years. In 1642 during the English Civil War forces besieged the castle. Nearly 300 died in that siege and it was notable for the extensive mining from adjacent houses and counter-mining from within the castle. Children were sent out of the castle secretly to try and burn those houses but failed. Another siege ensued in 1649.
After some quiet King James II (a Catholic king) of England was trying to fend of an attempt by the future King William (of William & Mary fame) to take the throne. A bit of this fight was played out in Ireland. King John’s Castle was defended by Jacobites in 1691 when William’s forces attacked. The mayor of the town panicked and had the drawbridge from the Thomond Bridge connecting to the castle raised prematurely. This stranded 800 Jacobites who had left the castle to engage the enemy on the bridge. They were all either slaughtered or fell in the River Shannon and drowned. Sure, swimming wasn’t something most people did back then but from what we’d seen of the river the current would’ve likely been an issue. In this nearly half-century of action nearly 5,000 died in the castle. Yikes.
Education time over we first went to the undercroft where we could see the archaeological dig that revealed the mine shafts and various other stages of building on the site — not just the castle but even the basement of an Ostman (Viking) home. We could hear water dripping, I couldn’t imagine being one of the poor souls that dug the mines and counter-mines back then. Once out of the undercroft we were out in the courtyard of the castle.
There was an area near the south wall with activities for kids. There were also various rooms themed to different activities in the construction or running of the castle — smith, coinmaker, mason, etc. Incidentally, it is a blacksmith if dealing with iron, else if dealing with tin and silver a whitesmith. I had no idea.
We saw the remains of the Great Hall, originally one story but when the courtyard was levelled out the floor became a basement (with dungeon) and a new floor built above. We climbed some narrow well-nosed stone spiral staircases to the top of the north wall and gatehouse. The views from there were remarkable — the River Shannon with its swift current and “falls” (not really, more like a slight drop of a couple of feet playing out over several hundred feet), Thomond Stadium, church towers, and beyond the lush green fields and rolling hills. Finally, we wrapped up our castle visit around 2p by checking out the gift store. Magnets!
We crossed the bridge to the other side of the river and saw the treaty stone marking the spot where the Jacobite forces of Limerick surrendered to William’s army in 1691. Some chose to join the army, some to stay where their religion would be tolerated (spoiler: it wasn’t), and some left for France — called the Flight of the Wild Geese. The promenade along the river was closed here due to high tide concerns so we switched to the other side of the street and made our way to The Curragower, a pub recommended by the hotel the night before for decent pub food.
They were right! I had bangers & mash and Michelle chicken & waffles — with some excellent sweet sauce. We also had two small bottles of ginger ale. While there some male teenagers in track suits (seems to be pretty much the normal wear for young folk in Limerick) and a female in a long skirted school uniform came in. Wonder what the drinking age is! The server noted that the weather the prior week had been seven days of wall-to-wall rain (from the remnants of Danielle). We got so lucky!
At this point it was just after 3pm. We crossed back over the river via Sarsfield Bridge and passed the Shannon Rowing Club and old locks. After stopping by the room briefly we headed back out just after 4pm to go to Sodalicious (a place specializing in soda bread). There were all out of scones and the soda bread was less sweet-looking and more savory-looking so we got some cookies for later and tea with milk. We made it back to the room around 4:45pm and crashed until just after 7:00pm.
The AC still wasn’t fixed. So Michelle called down to the front desk and was informed by a person that I didn’t earlier speak with that the hotel hasn’t any AC. Haha. Sun setting, we headed down to a restaurant near the river called Milano. Michelle and I shared an excellent American Roma pizza — basically a thin and crispy pizza with tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. For desert she had chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream and I had a brownie with raspberry sorbet. Because they couldn’t give me a full-size brownie (it was late) they didn’t charge for my dessert. Score!
About 9pm made it back to the room for offloading pictures, talking with Genetta, publishing the first day’s blog, and writing this blog.
