We didn’t just book a vacation to Dublin, we wanted to explore Ireland a little bit more than that. On the first few days we had seen Dublin and Glendalough in the Wicklow mountains. After Dublin, we would stay one night in Kilkenny before traveling to Cork, where we would stay for another two days before going home again. Our day in Kilkenny was short, but definitely worth a blogpost!

Our plan was to take the bus from Dublin to Kilkenny. We didn’t know where the bus stops were, so we asked a couple of people. Everyone sent us in another direction, so we kept walking in circles before finally finding the bus stop. We left two hours later than was originally our plan. But you know, that happens. We tried not to let it get us down. We were very tired so today wouldn’t be a very busy day. We slept and had lunch in the bus and walked to our hotel when we arrived in Kilkenny. We would stay one night in the Kilkenny House Hotel, which was quite luxurious compared to what we usually stayed in, and especially compared to the room we would later stay in in Cork….

Did I mention we were tired? We only wanted to relax in the room for a little while. I took a bath, we watched some television. And then we fell asleep. We only woke up with just enough time to make it to the city center, have some quick dinner and then start the Ghost Tour we booked.

Kilkenny is a small town with a lot of old buildings and ancient history. When we had booked our flights and hotels, I was looking for things to do in the city. I found this ghost tour that sounded amazing. I was a little bit afraid that it would be a tour with things jumping out of the dark, which is something I would not love (did I mention I’m a scaredy cat?), but luckily it wasn’t. Instead a tour guide would take us through the medieval city centre and tell us ghost stories.

For the tour, we got to dress the part. We could all get a cape and a wizard’s hat which was very fun. Only Boyfriend and I did this, the rest of our group didn’t want to. Which was their loss, because the outfit really helped a lot with the rain. Though a lot of other tourists just stared at us…

Our guide was a very good storyteller and he told us all sorts of ghostly tales about things that happened in this town. Sightings of Banshees, for one, but he also told us some tales about witches. The one I remember best was about Alice Kyteler. She was the first woman that was accused of witchcraft in Ireland. In her life, she had been married four times and all of her husbands died under mysterious circumstances. She was on trial for witchcraft and was imprisoned along with her servant Petronella, who had confessed, under torture, to have helped Alice in her witchcraft. But only Petronella stood on trial, and was burned at the stake, for Alice had disappeared and was never to be seen again…

After the ghost tour, we did a little walk around the town ourselfs, admiring the city in the nightlight, before we went back to our hotel to get some rest. The next day we would be traveling to Cork.