Our travels start in the town of Birr at the County Arms Birr. The drive only took a little over an hour and I was very surprised that I was able to drive on the other side of the road again rather easily. Chris had to say “Over” a few times to get me moved over to the right a bit more, but not too bad!

The County Arms Birr is lovely and we met the nicest concierge! Our room wasn’t available yet as we were about 3 hours early for check in. He kindly took our bags and, once our room was available, he’d get our luggage moved to our room and come and find us in the restaurant to let us know. Wonderful way to start!

The restaurant/bar was nice, pretty standard with general bar food. Nothing too Irish, but we were definitely hungry by then! After getting into our room, we prepared ourselves for a walk to downtown Birr and to see Birr Castle and Demesne.

The concierge had recommended seeing the Library on the way as it was previously a convent which was interesting and was supposed to have information about the history of Birr. We get there, and the librarian provided us with printouts of some history of the convent and the library materials. Not exactly what we were expecting! The building was lovely, but not enough to take pictures. So off to the Castle we went!

The owners of the castle were in residence so we weren’t able to visit it, but the Earls from the 1800’s were very scientifically minded so we got to see what used to be the largest telescope as well as go through their exhibits of all the other astronomy, botany, photography, and other “-onomy’s’” that they were involved in. We also saw the largest treehouse, unfortunately it was under construction so we weren’t able to go inside. It wasn’t built in a tree, so not sure why it’s considered a treehouse. Chris thinks it might have been built around a tree, but we couldn’t see it. Can you?

We also walked around some gardens and finally saw the castle. It’s rather large, but once you’ve seen Blarney Castle (which we saw the first time we were in Ireland) and Versailles in France, the thrill has run out a bit. It’s still nice though.

We haven’t done much today, but we are exhausted. Not sleeping on the plane was not great! We’ll get a good night’s sleep (I hope) and spend tomorrow visiting a Medieval site including a gothic cathedral, the most haunted castle in Europe (supposedly), and go try out some local whiskey!