Today we had the immense pleasure of driving on nice wide multi-lane modern highways for the most part. I cannot possibly over stress the significant improvement in relaxed travel this makes for all concerned as we motor along.
Today was for the most part '
ladies day' as the primary objective was to visit
the Waterford Crystal Factory and Store in Waterford, Ireland. We had some concern that the factory would not be open for tours but were pleased to find that was not the case. There is a great deal of information about the history of Waterford Crystal
if you follow
this link for the Waterford Crystal details.
Our tour was guided by a nice young lady named "Tara" (very Irish!) ... it took about 45 minutes and we were actually able to speak to some of the master craftsmen as they went about their tasks. It takes 8 years of apprenticeship before a person is considered a master of the specific area of glass making they pursue AND ...
the last apprentice finished his 8 years over 20 years ago !!! So, all of the current Waterford Crystal Master Craftsmen have been at their work 30 or more years! We were told that this is now a problem for the company and they will start trying to train some new apprentices in the next year or so ...
Here are some pics of the tour and there are others in the gallery ...
Besides the factory tour ... there is of course ... the
"Retail Space" ... the 'gift shop' in this place is a bit "higher tone" than some of our recent tours ...
Both ladies found something they couldn't live without ... I didn't get a photo of Linda's ... Carolyn is having this shipped home ...
From Waterford, we headed towards our lodging for the night in Dungarvan. On the way we stopped at
Lismore Castle . We didn't really know what to expect ... we anticipated some castle ruins ... what we found was an 'occupied castle' that we were not allowed to tour inside because people live there ... BUT we were allowed to tour the 'gardens' ....
Now THAT is a Castle!!!
And the gardens are beautiful ...
As we motored along today we all marveled at the almost picture perfect beauty of the countryside out our windows ...
We had our dinner in the seaside town of
Dungarvan and then managed to find our B&B for the night ...
The
Seaview Guest House is a lovely B&B .... tomorrow we will "kiss the Blarney Stone" and motor to Killarney.
