King John's Castle

Well, as per this blog's namesake, of course I had to visit perhaps Limerick's top tourist destination, King John's Castle, at least once while I was in the city. About seven of us took advantage of a beautiful Thursday and walked into town to see the castle.

Built in the early 13th century, King John's castle never actually housed its namesake—rather, it was more of a PR ploy than anything else, as John had gained a reputation for being a terrible king, and, as Lord of Ireland, wanted to reclaim some glory. Anyhow, the castle was built on top of original Viking settlements extant since the 10th century and has taken many uses over the years—perhaps most notably it was sieged when troops under the control of Cromwell attempted to sieze control of Ireland in 1641-2. The museum, quality-wise, was okay—the best part of the castle was probably being able to look out and around the city atop one of its tall towers. There were plenty of cool remains recently unearthed of Viking houses, however, and I did learn a good deal about the town of Limerick—itself originally founded by Vikings in the early 10th century. Pretty amazing stuff.

We also ventured over to the Limerick City museum, which, although a bit dated, still had some interesting artifacts from as far back as 6000 BC—extremely dated, in fact!—tools used by early inhabitants of the area. The museum also featured artifacts from some of the 1916 uprising leaders.

We meandered about the city after that, stopping at a Charlie-Chaplin themed pub (which played only Oasis songs, to my delight) and to the Locke for dinner, where I had an amazing steak sandwich (with pepper sauce). Not surprising, given the name of the restaurant, it faced the Shannon.

Later, Richard and I walked out of Limerick (to the east) and into the surrounding countryside, seeing some nice houses and passing by a couple of golf courses and even seeing a fantastic sunset. It's too bad the ran has returned today. This weekend, when we venture to the countryside again—this time to weekend at Stephen's parents' house in Delvin (near Dublin), I hope it will be nicer.