On the way back to Dublin

It was up and out again this morning for the longish trek back to Dublin. And it was raining relentlessly ...again.
We stopped at Waterford and were going to have a tour around the crystal factory but we'd have to wait 40min and then the tour was an hour and we decided that was too much time. There was a statue of Princess Aoife & Strongbow - he was the Norman invader.  I really liked the face of the Princess because the rain made it look like she was crying. We got thoroughly soaked again having a bit of a wander around.  So it was back into the car and zoom off to Kilkenny.
Kilkenny is a medieval town, with a good walking tour of historic places and even a ghost tour at night.  Shame we had to miss that one. While these lovely historic towns are picturesque and charming we found the Achilles heel; trying to find parking and actually moving through the town in a car is an absolute nightmare.  Oh and if its raining there are no verandas so walking around you just get soaking wet.  We visited the Black Abbey  which had the most fabulous stained glass windows; St Marys cathedral & Kilkenny Castle.  Lunch was fairly abysmal and took way too long to arrive.  We reached Dublin about 4.30 and had quite a bit of trouble finding the Airport Hilton, back & forth on the motorway  & negotiating millions of roundabouts raising everyone's stress levels. The GPS wasn't updating quick enough to clearly identify which lane we needed to be in but we got there eventually.
Dinner was almost as abysmal as lunch so it felt like a bit of a write off day really; we got cold & wet multiple times, didn’t enjoy any of the dining experiences and its still bloody raining.

St Mary's Cathedral, Waterford

Kilkenny Castle

Kilkenny Castle

Kilkenny

Princess Aoife