Carlow Town

We got up a bit early this morning and, after breakfast and a final walk through Saint Stephen's Green, we checked out of out hotel and took a taxi to the train station. About one hour later by intercity rail, and here we are in Carlow (pop 20,000), with the approximately half mile walk from the station,  to our hotel in the center of town, giving us our first feel for the place.

Carlow is not your typical tourist town: about an hour by rail southwest of Dublin, it had a bit of a boom as a bedroom community in the Celtic Tiger days, it's a bustling enough town with plenty of nice old buildings, and there are a number of amenities but they're mostly for home use. There's a few pubs, and at least one B&B, so we're good.

We're in Carlow mostly for genealogical reasons. My father's paternal grandmother was from a village, now absorbed by the town, called Graigecullen - it's basically what's on the west bank of the River Barrow, which divides Carlow. No looking up graves or relatives, I just want to walk where she once walked. We did that this afternoon, walking along the riverbank, and tomorrow we'll bike the 20 miles to Bunclody, the village where my father's grandfather was born.