Castle Leslie

Lindsay and Kathleen's Visit, continued:

We took it easy last Monday and slept in a bit to recover from our St. Paddy's Day beer fest.  We're not 22 anymore, I'm afraid.  Dangit.

We hopped on a train and rode out to Howth to show L&K the cute seaside town.  We ate at Deep and got amazing seafood and then played with the seals in the water and sat on the seawall and lounged.  It was glorious.  We stopped by Temple Bar later for a beer before our Afternoon Tea at the Shelbourne! I unfortunately don't have any pictures of that fun occasion.  Shoot!

We had toyed with the idea of taking a short 48-hour trip somewhere while the girls were here, be it to London or somewhere in Ireland, and Kathleen and I finally decided on a quaint little castle in County Monaghan (smack dab in the middle of Ireland) that one of my friends had recommended.  Oh, and Paul McCartney and Heather Mills got married there!  So I guess it wasn't too shabby.  This also meant that one of us had to gather our courage and DRIVE on the opposite side of the road and car to get there and back without killing the other two.  This caused immense anxiety (on my part) and after much discussion between Kathleen and I, it was decided (mostly by Drew, I think) that I would drive.  I...think I did...ok.  Mostly cause Kathleen and Lindsay were on one side of the car telling me every other minute that I was about to side swipe another car, curb, shrub, tree, wall, etc.  Regardless, I'm glad I have that experience under my belt and besides a stressful bout of driving in the city centre of Dublin, I'd say I'm not so intimidated.

Anyway, on to Castle Leslie!

In the car plotting our course.  And hopefully not our deaths.

Look!  I'm driving on the opposite side of the road.

This was the Hunting Lodge of the old estate (where we stayed) - it's been turned into part of the hotel experience.

Our beautiful room for 3.

A fun little wet room with boots for all to enjoy.

The Equestrian Center 

Side note about the Equestrian Center: Kathleen and I made a booking for what we thought was an easy horseback ride for an hour.  I was so pumped and we went down there, got our horses names, put on our riding boots and helmets, and the instructor lady came to take us to our horses.  She gave us a once over and immediately said she'd be switching our horses and condescendingly asked if we had any experience with trotting, if we rode "Western" or "English", and put me on my horse and made me demonstrate how much/little I knew about riding a horse.  She looked at me like I was a dumbass and basically told me to get off the horse and we needed to sign up for a different tour.  I clearly don't have much riding experience but I was told this ride was going to be EASY when I signed up for it and she was so rude and made me/us feel so STUPID that we canceled the whole thing and went inside for wine instead.  I then sent them an earful via email about our terrible experience there.  Bitches.

ANYWAY!  Back to the pics:

This is the ACTUAL Castle Leslie.  It only has about 8 rooms to stay in (that were full for the weekend) but we were fine with that as we heard it's haunted.  And we proceeded to scare ourselves all weekend talking about haunted things.

The haunted front door that looked completely deserted aside from this nasty cat.

The (presumably) haunted dining room.

Winston Churchill's baby dress?

The gardens/grounds.

Linds and KP standing on the front porch of the castle.

The haunted lake.

A haunted boat house.

Kathleen walking down the muddy lane from the castle.

A haunted gazebo where we really ran with the haunted stories.

Hey look!  A weirdo!

A hidden living room in the back of the castle where we had a couple glasses of wine.

A drawing room turned bar.

Lindsay stoking some flames at the bar after a delicious 3-course meal!

It was a very relaxing trip to the Irish countryside and I think the girls had a good time.  We got back that next night, ate a yummy meal at The Schoolhouse Hotel, and got in bed early in anticipation of their early flight the next morning.  

I think their work here is done.

We had a great time with these gals and had a lot of laughs and did a lot of silly things.  Thanks for coming to visit me Lindsay and Kathleen!!

Drew and I always get sad and down after fun guests leave and this was no exception.  Thursday and Friday sucked.  And then I got sick with a cold/cough so I literally didn't leave the house all weekend OR change out of my pajamas.  Whooooops.  However, the next week improved just in time to go to Budapest for Easter, which I'll post about tonight!  Yay!

Happy Thursday!