Kennedy’s of Enniskerry is, as you might expect, in Enniskerry. Enniskerry is an enchanting village at the foot of a valley in Wicklow, a county immediately south of Dublin, that was original built as the estate village for the nearby Palladian Powerscourt House: Kennedy’s is a charming café on Church Hill right in the heart of the village.
Category Archives: Ireland
Kennedy’s of Enniskerry
Filed under Coffee, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés
Ursula Celano Notebook: Girls on Bikes
The weather on Monday was ark-appropriate: for ark-appropriate read insanely wet, wild and windy. So, I was in need of something cheering to take my mind off the incessant rain and the ubiquitous grey mist. And I found just the thing when I called into the Irish Design Shop’s branch in the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) and bought an Ursula Celano notebook which has an utterly charming cover a bit of which you see in the image above.
Filed under Craft, Designers, Ireland, Musings, Shops/Shopping
Tall Ships Festival
I am smitten by the sea and I especially love the way the ever-changing seascape reflects the annual onward inexorably march of the seasons. I also like looking at boats bobbing in the bay and if I am passing Dublin port enjoy spotting the cargo ships and cruise liners docked there. It was therefore a racing certainty that I would go to look at the tall ships which arrived in Dublin recently for the Tall Ships Festival (August 23 to August 26th).
Makers and Brothers
It is so very seldom that I walk into any sort of retail space and think to myself wow this is just so right. But I did when I went to see Makers & Brothers pop-up shop the weekend before last. Makers & Brothers is such a good name because it so perfectly describes the enterprise. Mark and Jonathan Legge are the brothers: the makers are a selection of craftspeople and designers whose products the brothers sell.
Filed under Craft, Designers, Ireland, Shops/Shopping
Irish Craft: Hands On by Sylvia Thompson
We live in a highly mechanized and technologically driven age where the degree of separation between us and those who make most of the things that we use on a daily basis seems as vast as the count of numbers to infinity. Distant industrialized manufacturing is a relatively new fangled thing: craft in contrast is almost as old as the oceans and is deeply embedded into the community where a craftsperson works.
Walking: Killiney Hill
Because, these past few months, I have eaten a surfeit of sugary treats aka slices of cake and put regular exercise on the back burner the land of healthy living seemed as distant as the far reaches of the solar system. It was time for a change, so this week I munched my way through gargantuan quantities of fruit & vegetables. And I walked, walked and walked some more. As I live beside the sea, my neighbourhood is a pleasant place to stroll around but if I was to pound the same route continuously I could very easily get bored. Variety is after all the spice of life so it was time for a change of scenery.
O’Brien Chop House
Tempus fugit at an undeniably scary speed, like a spry sprinter dashing furiously towards a finishing line. Time tethers us to the present while allowing us to glance backwards and to idly wonder about an uncertain and not foretold future. Time has a way of blurring and misting its own empirical chronological lines so that what happened just a few short days past often seems like centuries ago. A case in point is my recent fleeting trip to Lismore and the lunch I had in the O’ Brien Chop House while I was there; it was only three weeks ago yet seems to belong to a time out of mind in a far distant long forgotten temporal realm.
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Filed under Food/Wine, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Lismore
I am going to stick my head above the parapet and declare that Lismore is quite simply the loveliest town in Ireland. Of course, I should say that I haven’t seen absolutely every town in Ireland and of course I should let you know that when I saw Lismore, for the first time, a few weeks ago it was on what was probably the nicest day, meteorologically-wise we have had in a slew of summers. Still I feel that Lismore would be equally alluring even on the dullest of dull days.
Greenan Farm
I recently picked up a leaflet about Greenan Farm and its museums and mazes in a coffee shop. As I was idly flicking through it I had a light-bulb moment and suddenly thought it is exactly the sort of place that I would like to visit. And so it was that I found myself travelling the highways and byways to get there yesterday. Well actually I am exaggerating a tad because Greenan farm, in the beautiful Glenmalure valley, is actually very accessible being a mere hour’s drive from Dublin.
Filed under Ireland, Sustainable/Green, Travel
Cloona: Health Retreat Centre
I arrived home yesterday from a six-day sojourn in Cloona, a health retreat centre in the West of Ireland. Now that I am safely home, I realize that my decision to go to Clonna was one of the best, if not the best, that I made in the past twelve months.
Filed under Healthy Living, Ireland
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 