Dromoland & Bunratty

Friday was our last day in Ireland. So we decided to hit up the family homes on our farewell tour. Our first stop was Dromoland Castle.

Dromoland Castle

O'Briens in front of Dromoland

The blood O'Briens

We got out for a little bit and were nosey. It actually is a hotel now so we were all "Don't mind us" as we walked around the halls.

Family Crest in the Stained Glass window

After our tour of the home, we meandered down to the gift shop to see what kind of tourist trap things we could purchase. They also have a golf course on site, so, surprisingly, my dad took the longest in the gift shop buying golf things for himself. Mom and I waited in the car with Mel.

Once Dad was done in the store, we drove over to Bunratty Castle. Also a Castle where the O'Brien clan once laid down their heads.

Gee, don't they look pleased?

Dad and I in front of the Castle.

They have the castle all set up like it would've been back when the Earl lived there. Pretty interesting to walk around and see all the old stuff. And we, of course, had to take the typical cheesy touristy photos.

Here I am, locked in the dungeon.

You can walk up to the top of the castle, on very narrow and steep stairs. Here's the countryside from the top of the castle.

And the Picnic tables, how 15th century...

The Castle

Surrounding the Castle, they have typical Irish houses. They have "imported" houses from Dublin, the southern coast, etc. so you can see how people would've lived in those areas a 200 years ago. They also have a turn of the century village mock up, with a school, a doctor's house, a pub, etc. They also had animals. Goats, chickens, deer, dogs - all kinds of creatures. And, you know our family, we were preoccupied with the animals moreso than anything. And you might think this is a small horse, but it's actually a large dog - an Irish wolfhound.

My mom, feeding the donkey

The Deer family they had. My mom has 7 invigorating minutes of them. Doing this exact thing the whole time. She loves her some deer.

The old pup was tired.

I guess I can't talk about my mom when I have 3 pictures of dogs...but look how cute he is!

After petting the puppies, we went to the gift shop, where I had to convince my mother that buying EVERY!SWEATER! in Ireland was probably not a good idea. We also grabbed some lunch there in the cafeteria.

On our way out of the Bunratty area, we stopped by Durty Nelly's. The family story behind this is that my Memaw and Pepaw came to Ireland in the '70's. They ate at Durty Nelly's and my Memaw (the portrait of Southern Elegance) was just appalled. They call it "Durty" for a reason people. When my Dad and Uncle Gavin came back in 2008, they stopped by Durty Nelly's as well. And then in 2012, we rounded out the story by stopping in.

We took a little jaunt inside to look around and I spotted a VT sticker!

VT Pride all the way in Ireland. The guy in the bottom of the pic cracks me up, nice posing.

After that, Mel offered to take me over to St. Camillus Hospital, where John S. had told us to go for the birth records. Me and my parents walked in and the lady (Jane) at the front desk as how she could help, I explained that I wanted to see if they could release the birth/death records of my family. She told me and my parents to come to her office.

There, she explained that the city of Limerick only have birth records from 1864-On, death records from 1920 on, and marriage records from 1920 on. The other records, births before 1864 and deaths & before 1920, were all manually kept in the appropriate county offices. She wrote down the contact information for the lady that works there so I could contact her for the records that I needed. She then went and searched for my great grandfather's (as well as his siblings) birth certificates. She went away for a couple minutes and then came back and told us that she had found them. We paid her the 20 Euro for the search and the copies of the records. She took down my address and promised to have them mailed to me that next Monday.

Once again, my family and I were blown away by the niceness and willingness of people to help us. If that would've been in America, Miss Bitter Betsey would've told me to get lost the second I told her what I wanted.

Update on this...I just received the birth certificates in the mail the other day. Well, copies of what the registrar wrote in 1884.  The thing I find most interesting about this is the "his mark" on the signature line. Obviously my great-great-grandfather couldn't write, so he had to just x marks the spot. Amazing to see how 4 generations later, things have changed so much....

I'm waiting to hear back from Betty about the other records, but hopefully they will help me get closer to the the information I've been hunting all this time.

And lastly, a map of our day's travel.