Foynes: Day 17 – Ireland 2014

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25 April 2014

After a phenomenal breakfast to wrap out our stay at Castle House, we were ready to hit the road. First stop for our packed day? Foynes Flying Boat Museum!

Foynes Flying Boat
And Maritime Museum

Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum is located in the town of Foynes near the Shannon River estuary. It is absolutely packed with maritime history, including the Flying Boats. And the best part? There is a full-scale Flying Boat replica that you can actually go into and explore! Those days of luxurious flying look so comfortable!

There is plenty else to see, including a display on the invention of Irish Coffee, a display about life on the river, a chance to go up in the control tower, and the opportunity to grab lunch in the O’Regan Restaurant or a quick sip in the Irish Coffee Lounge. It seems that their displays have grown since we visited six years ago, as there is much on their website that I don’t recall while we were there. Given the chance, we’d love to go back and check out what’s new!

Our favorite part of the museum, hands down, was the Flying Boat. What a thing of beauty! I can’t even imagine what travel must have been like. So spread out, so comfortable. Crazy! And to top it off? We were the only people there. How lucky is that? We had the whole plane to ourselves and we took full advantage. We must have explored every nook and cranny it had to offer. We’d definitely recommend a visit to see it for yourself!

Our time at the museum.

The rest of our day was, well, rather a bust. We had three more things on our list for the day and none of them really panned out. I’d like to give you a quick rundown of each, however, because we had been really excited to visit them and you might be, too!

Celtic Parks and Gardens

I’m going to start with what I remember and then I’ll tell you what I found out while trying to research this location. When we left the Foynes Flying Boat Museum, we asked about a little park called the Celtic Parks and Gardens. As far as we understood, it was also in Foynes, but we didn’t have much information on it. The people we asked said they were pretty sure it was closed, so we decided to move on and not waste time trying to find it.

To find some background on the place, I typed ‘Celtic Parks and Gardens Foynes’ into Google and was rather surprised when a familiar picture popped up. I was going to save this bit for later, but I might as well touch on it here. We ended up staying at a B&B in Adare, and after enjoying a delicious dinner, we walked through a beautiful park where a wedding was wrapping up and taking a ton of photos. I specifically remember the beautiful walk up to the gazebo. When I Googled Celtic Parks and Gardens, there it was. Staring at me from the computer screen.

What??

Confused, I clicked on the Tripadvisor page for it, and sure enough, the same park! Did we just misunderstand at the time and end up there by happenstance later in the evening? After all, Adare is less than a half-hour from Foynes, so perhaps we just mixed it up. The park sign that is shown in the pictures on Tripadvisor is familiar to me. It says Adare Town Park and lists the rules and hours of the park but doesn’t mention Celtic Parks and Gardens. It seems that the two parks are one and the same! From the pictures, I think we missed out on part of it, but after all these years, turns out we actually DID visit one of the places we thought we missed! Naturally, I didn’t take any photos, but you can check out more here on TripAdvisor!

Carrigogunnel Castle

Try saying THAT name five times fast! It wasn’t the name that drew our attention, but instead the iconic image of a ruined castle on a hill. It was a must! We found it easily enough, although we felt like we were traveling down roads we shouldn’t. However, it looked as if we’d have to hop a fence to get to it when we got there. We didn’t feel comfortable doing that, so we just snapped some photos from the road. I wish we had seen this web post before we went because it seems that you can, in fact, make your way up to explore the ruins. *Quickly adds Carrigogunnel Castle to the list of things to redo on a future Ireland trip.*

The castle was built in the mid 15th century and was quite a place in its day. Unfortunately, as with many other castles in Ireland, it was destroyed in the late 1600s. Having been taking by the English, who turns out didn’t really need it, it was blown up with quite a large quantity of gunpowder. It’s a shame, but boy does it make for a wonderful site these days. Go check it out if you get the chance!

Mungret Abbey

Next on our agenda was Mungret Abbey. To be honest, I have no idea what drew us to this location. I can’t find it in our travel book and nothing rings a bell when I toss it into Google. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d have to say it’s because it looks like it has an awesome cemetery. I (Lydia) have a weird love and adoration for cemeteries (call me weird, I know). But they have such a peaceful feeling to me and I really love strolling through them, trying to give life and history to every name I read.

Whatever the desire to visit may have been, it didn’t matter in the end. We drove around for a good hour trying to find the place and never succeeded. We decided to cut our losses and head to the second big attraction of the day.

Adare Castle

As you can imagine, Billy was most excited about this particular stop. Adare Castle is a medieval fortified castle that sits on the bank of the River Maigue. This has Billy written all over it! According to their website, they were supposed to open at the beginning of April, but when we arrived, they were closed until June. Womp womp. We took a lovely stroll along the castle walls instead before heading back into Adare to find some grub and a place to sleep.

A Relaxing Evening

I don’t remember where we ate, but I do remember walking around town. There were lovely little thatched cottages that were shops, but we were late out, and most of them were closed. That’s when we stumbled upon the park that turned out to be the ‘park we were looking for but never realized it until six years later’ park. It was a great end to an imperfect day. And to top it all off? We found a B&B nearby.

It was probably our weirdest experience at a B&B we’ve had. When we rang the bell, an elderly lady answered. We had phoned about a room earlier, but someone else had answered, so I explained our situation to her. I got to ‘He is getting over being sick and…’. At this point, the woman shut the door to just a sliver and inquired, “What kind of sick?” We explained that it was just an allergy thing and he wasn’t contagious, which seemed to calm her, although she remained suspicious of us until we left the next morning. In the end, we got a room for the night. Although, due to the sign, we decided to pass on the shower altogether and head straight to bed.

Cheers,
Lydia and Billy