Kinsale, Ireland
I’ve been in Kinsale for almost 24 hours now. We decided to stay here until Sunday morning so we could relax a bit and see more of this city instead of rushing along to Dublin. The town seems a bit more affluent in general, there are many Porsche’s in the street and large yacht’s in the harbour.
We went on a walking tour this morning that was pretty interesting. Learned a bit of the history of this town and town and its place in the history of Ireland. The port is in an important location for shipping and the site of several wars over the years. The last Spanish armada of 30 or so boats came here to attempt to take this this port in hopes of later attacking England. They were met by English troops coming in and shortly after Northern Irish, all having different motives. It turned out the English beat the Irish here and that’s how northern Ireland is part of England. Basically it came down to the Irish Chieftain’s arguing and not being able to agree on the plan of attack, and that’s the reason they lost to the English who had fewer troops and less supplies at the time. The guide said if the battle would have ended with the Spanish winning that day, he may be speaking Spanish instead of English on the tour today.
It is fairly common to hear people speaking traditional Irish here and you can even hear it on the radio and television stations. I was surprised out how prevalent it was. Reminded me of the pride of the folks of Barcelona on holding on to Catalan as the official language vs. Castillion. I don’t know much about the language right now, but it sounds very old and different. More like latin and some French sounding words. I believe its Gaelic but the man giving the tour this morning just called it “speaking Irish”, I didn’t get a chance to ask him more about it but I’m curious to know.
Walked up to Charles castle/fort that was 1.5km outside of town, it was interesting but not worth 4EU they were asking for admission. The use of the restroom after a few Guinness prior to the walk was quite welcome and worth at least 1 or 2 EU by itself at the time. The fort had a beautiful view of the bay from above a great few of the open sea.
I want to watch the Liverpool match coming on in a few hours and have a few beers, they seem to be big Liverpool and Manchester fans here. I’m pulling for Liverpool to when the Premiereship this year myself. Took it a bit easy on the Guinness yesterday but we’re back on it again today. We noticed the excessive amount of Guinness’s seemed to give us bouts of the “trapped wind”. Hopefully that passes.
I am feeling good about the photos I’ve gotten on this trip, feeling I’m getting in more of a groove. This is the first time I have extensively used a wide angle lens and feel it definitely works for many of the scenes I’ve captured on this trip. Other times, it doesn’t work as well and I’m getting a feel for when I want to use the 50mm or 20mm, I taking away the ability to zoom in and out on this trip. I have a large number of photos of wide angle shots of the streets/roads I’ve come across in Ireland, looking forward to seeing how they turn out in a series. Also, I was very happy with the ones I took of shadows at a cemetery yesterday. I’m looking forward to continuing my artistic projects in general, continue improving my drawing skills and do more photo series’ and see what comes of it.
We’re driving to Dublin early in the morning and I have a flight out tomorrow afternoon. Even though this wasn’t a very long trip it was a good length for now and still a good getaway. Still 24 hours of it left to go anyway, so its not over.