Travelling Ireland; Monday, 09 August, 2004

First stop on Monday was going to be St Mary's Cathedral, but it was closed for a service so I took the opportunity to wander down to the castle and booked myself onto a tour for the late afternoon.

After a stop of coffee I joined the city walking tour. The well presented tour had lots of background information, not just on Kilkenny but on the whole of Irish history.

After a short pause for lunch I visited St Canices Cathedral and tower. The cathedral itself its quite interesting, but just outside is one of the original round towers of Ireland which you can climb to get good views of the city from. The climb however is up increasingly steep ladders that, by the top, even I wasn't liking and I make a habit of going up towers needlessly (See any other trip for confirmation!!)

Next to the Cathedral is the very plane and simple St Canices Chapel which is a good place to recover your composure and make solemn promises never to climb towers that use ladders ever again!!

Next stop was the Rothe House, one of the oldest buildings in the city. The house is an original Tudor town house that was built for and by the Rothe family. A 20 minute video presentation on the house and the key exhibitions gives about as much information as the displays themselves and after the video the rest of the house is a little disappointing.

The Butler Gallery of Contemporary art is a free exhibition located in one wing of the castle. It displays contemporary art. It's worth depends on your view of contemporary art - I found it a pointless waste of space and money, but I dislike contemporary art - others may disagree.

After that it was time for my tour of the castle (or - as I am a Butler myself, but probably not related to the original owner - the families country residence as I called it) which was very well presented and took you over most of the property.