April 18 – Waterford and Driving the Copper Coast

We finally got sun today…real sun.  It is still a bit cool but much better than it has been elsewhere.

After breakfast we checked out of the room, stored our luggage with the front desk and headed out to find some sights to see.  The area directly across from the Hotel is the Viking Triangle. There was some church ruins...

and the world's longest wooden sword at 20 meters long (65 feet).  Carved out of a Douglas Fir trunk, it was inspired by a Viking Sword dating to about 850 AD.

There is a Viking Museum that we couldn’t find so we headed to the Waterford Crystal Showroom and Factory where we took a 50 minute tour of the manufacturing operation.  The guide first showed us some of the wooden molds used to help in the creation of specialty pieces.  They don't last very long as the heat of the molten glass pretty much chars the wood.  The production molds are of iron and last much longer.  This wooden mold was used in the creation of a trophy for the Irish Open.

We saw glass (crystal) blowing (all by hand and mouth),

marking the pieces so that the cutters will know where to cut,

and cutting (they have only one woman master cutter).

They had a display of bowls in the various phases of production.  There was the blown bowl,  the same bowl with cuts and the final polished bowl.  We were allowed to pick them up to see the difference in weight.  The original bowl was extremely heavy.  They obviously have to cut a lot out of the bowls to make the final pieces.  The final piece was much lighter.

All of the major production is conducted at this plant although they have a plant in Eastern Europe where the colored glass is manufactured.  We also visited the room where custom pieces are handmade.

And of course the tour ended in the showroom.  It was all very tempting but eventually we got out of there without buying anything.

We stopped by Christ Church Cathedral on our way back.

Then we headed back through the Viking Triangle (the area where the Vikings used to have an enclosed fort in the 900’s).  We found the replica of a Viking boat...

and the entrance to the Viking museum in the Reginald Tower that is right across the street from our hotel.  They had many interesting artifacts and a lot of information about the development of the area from the time of the Vikings to present day.

We then picked up our luggage and headed out to drive along the south eastern coast, much of it called the Copper Coast.  This is an area where copper was mined centuries ago.  We found some remains of some copper operations.

There weren’t a lot of towns along the way and it took us a while to find a lunch stop.  This one was one of our more unusual eateries.  The place, called the Copper Kitchen, is obviously geared to munchkins as the entire back was a petting zoo, children’s museum and very large paved area for riding the large number of kiddy rides…cars, trucks, tricycles, etc.  Food was pretty good, we both had soup and some very good Irish Brown Bread.  

We had some very good views of the coastline as we drove along.  

One stop was the beach outside of a little town called Annestown.

And we also stopped at Kilmurrin Cove.

We ended our day’s drive in the town of Kinsale, south of Cork and on the coast.  It is a pretty little place that will require a good bit of exploring.

When we arrive in our room we were greeted with towel swans, heart shaped chocolates and a note from the staff wishing us a happy honeymoon.  

We have been married for almost 46 years and it isn’t even our anniversary.  We thought it might be Tara's (our travel agent) doing, as she is always reminding the hotels of our birthdays,and such.  But we later asked her about it and she said it was not her...the local travel company must have made a mistake.  

We thought about telling the local travel company, but decided that the most likely outcome of that would be that the hotels would cancel our reservations instead of just cancelling the honeymoon greetings..