Mom and Mary stopped by last weekend to show us the “real Ireland.”  They arrived a bit late on Saturday morning due to heavy winds and rain but we all piled into the Hyundai (pronounced “Hi-and-dye” in Ireland) Accent and made our way to Thurles, Ireland.  Thurles isn’t much of a town according to road maps but our hotel was there and it was equidistant from Limerick, Cork, and Waterford.  Mary took the wheel and we headed down the less-than-stellar backroads of Ireland toward Thurles.

Once we got into town we started looking on the hotel documentation for an address.  There was no address listed anywhere.  We stopped in a gas station to ask where the Horse & Jockey Hotel was and were given this response:

“Addresses don’t work here”

He followed this with a few directions but Mom couldn’t understand his heavy accent at all.  We smiled and nodded, got back in the car, and looked at the map again.  We thought it quite amazing that the next town down the road was named Horse and Jockey, Ireland.  Whoa!

We headed in that direction and found that Horse and Jockey, Ireland consists of a car dealership and the Horse & Jockey Hotel.  We checked in, Mom argued her way into some free money, and ate at their fancy restaurant.  It should be noted that Mom and Mary got a bit loud in the restaurant telling us about their travels.  The other patrons were staring at us by the time Mom shouted, “groped groins.”  Ask her for the details.

We made our way to their fancy pool (and got free swim caps).  Katherine learned how to dog paddle and I almost floated (I’m obviously too dense but nobody else believes me).  We visited their wet and dry saunas and decided that saunas aren’t very much fun.

The next day we visited the church in Thurles because Mary’s ancestors came from Thurles.  Maybe they went to that church too, who knows?  The pictures below are from that church.