Travel-log Part 2: Waterford & CastleMartyr

Welcome to the second installment of my Ireland trip travel-log!

If I’m being perfectly honest, our first two days in Dublin were a little disappointing and Derek and I had a couple of moments of wondering, “Did we just waste a lot of money on this trip?”

And now we had to get ourselves to the car rental place and learn how to drive on the left side of the road. And by “we” I of course mean “Derek.”

It was all getting a little overwhelming.

Some of this, I’m sure, was due to jet-lag and a bit of culture shock (it’s real, folks… even in other countries where everyone still speaks the same language. Heck, I got culture shock crossing the Mason Dixon line in my own country!) But there were other factors: where we were staying was not a nice part of town. Later, we would discover that it used to be, back before 2020, but that Dublin in general has struggled on a downhill slide for the past 4-5 years and this is common knowledge across the country. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because driving on the left hand side of the road….

Thankfully, the first bit of driving was fairly easy getting out of Dublin. Derek said it took him 3-4 days to really get comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road, but he could have fooled me. Also, let me just say, that doing roundabouts backwards is a real quick way to adjust your brain… if you can do a roundabout backwards, you are well on your way to mastering left-side-of-the-road driving!

However, as we left Dublin behind us, we started to see some of the amazing scenery and true beauty of Ireland. Our spirits began to rise as we drove along and got used to measuring our speed in kilometers, the right lane being the “fast lane,” the interesting fact that barely anybody seemed willing to get up to the maximum allowable speed limit, and all the road signs being in both Irish and English!

It became quite the entertaining game, trying to figure out pronunciations of the Irish words as we drove around the country.

Waterford

Upon arriving in Waterford, we immediately began to feel more “at home” in Ireland. This much smaller town was quaint, beautiful, and pristine.

We had booked ourselves a tour through the Waterford Crystal Factory, and it was really a neat experience to see the process that the crystal goes through to get to the gorgeous finished products.

We got to watch actual glass blowing, which was wild, and take pictures of pieces of art that were way out of our price range. The smallest, most inexpensive item we saw was a small Christmas tree ornament that cost 100 euros!

After the tour and walking around for a bit, it was back on the road to our destination for the evening, Castlemartyr Resort.

Castlemartyr

Castlemartyr was exquisite. Though we only stayed there one night, it was definitely a highlight of the trip.

We arrived and felt instantly out of place… this is not the sort of accommodations we are used to (Country Inn and Suites is about as fancy as we usually get). Our less-than-friendly welcome to Dublin at a much more normal hotel being in the back of our heads, we weren’t exactly sure what our greeting would be here, or if they would look down on us for our non-name-brand clothings and serviceable but kind of ghetto luggage.

We needn’t have worried.

Everyone here was so kind and down-to-earth and friendly. Rion, one of the valets, asked us questions about our trip and when he heard we’d started in Dublin he got a little serious and asked how we’d liked it. We said, “We like here better.”

His whole demeanor relaxed and he grinned and said enthusiastically, “That’s good. Cork is the real capital of Ireland, you know!”

We would hear this repeated many times over the next day and a half… but I’ll get more into that in the next post when I talk more specifically about Cork.

After checking in, we went for a walk on the gorgeous grounds, discovered a hidden door in the forest wall, searched for leprechauns in the woods, explored the ruins of the castle part of Castlemartyr resort, enjoyed the waterfall, and checked out a truly massive tree!

It was restful and beautiful. We met an older gentleman who was visiting from Florida and had a good time chatting with him (he’s the one who told us about the hidden door, so that was cool).

That night, we ate at the hotel’s restaurant and it was really fun. The wait-staff was delightful and stood and chatted with us at various intervals and helped us navigate the menu, and it was just such a pleasant evening. I have come to realize that I’m not a huge fan in general of “traditional Irish” or “traditional British” foods (they are very similar). Also, split-pea soup is not my favorite. But the steak was good (Ireland does have a lot of cattle). And the desserts were delicious… and so pretty!

Tune in next time to hear about our day in Cork!