April 20 - Kinsale

After our very long drive yesterday we decided to focus on Kinsale itself today.  It is a good day for walking as it is sunny and actually warm.  The town isn’t too big so it didn’t take too long to wander the streets in the central old town aea.  Many of the houses and business are painted bright, colorful colors.  That might be from the days when fishermen had trouble finding their homes in the heavy fogs…so they would paint their homes very distinctive colors.

We wandered by the Regional Museum, housed in a building of Dutch architecture (on the front side).

The St. Multose Church dates from the Norman times.

St. John’s Church is a Baptist church dating from the early 1800’s…very different in style from the Normans.

We stopped by the Desmond Castle, right in the middle of town, but it was closed. 

After much debate we decided to take the 2 kilometer hike out to Charles Fort.  

One of the main attractions of the hike (for Mary) was all of the flowers in bloom.

The fort is a star fort dating from the 17^th century.  Star forts are just what they say, they are shaped like a star.  The star shaped forts became very common at that time.  The shape gives defenders better angles to return fire and also makes it more difficult for cannon balls to penetrate the walls (the balls slide off because of the angle). A fair amount was in ruins but the walls and bastions were in good shape. 

We had a light lunch there and then walked back to town on a waterside walk with good views of the harbor.

After all of that walking we headed back to the hotel to rest.  It was a lovely, warm, sunny day.

Around sunset the light looked good so Mary went out to the harbor to see if there would be a good sunset.  It turned out that the water in the harbor was almost glass smooth, turning the harbor into a mirror.

And there was even a reasonable sunset..