Exploring Limerick including King John’s Castle

I always think a roadtrip is a little like a cruise (without the fancy onboard entertainment and food). You’re always on the go, and trying to fit in as many of the sights on your one or two days in each place.  Limerick felt a bit like that, although you can fit a lot more than we did in our one day. We saw some lovely sights while visiting Limerick, plenty for our trip as we also wanted to relax while away.

We stayed in the Limerick Strand Hotel, which is just over one of the main bridges into the city.  It was a great location, and we could easily walk into town, using the map to find where we were heading.

Our first stop was King John’s Castle, just along the river walk.

On the way we passed the very colourful university buildings, along with their painted bollards.  More places should paint their bollards (and telephone cabinets – that seemed really common to do all over Ireland).  Although I did think some reminded me of Matey bubble bath.

The river walk was lovely, and took us past some sculptures, council buildings, and via the old Potato Market bridge (where the market was is now a scruffy car park).

King John’s Castle

The entrance to the castle was very understated.  We’d paid for our tickets online before going, but paying on the door was popular, and did hold us up. It was just one line so no benefit really to paying in advance.

The castle is 800 years old and has plenty of history over the years to discover.

The exhibitions take you through the history from the early Gaelic society, through to the Normans, the Reformation, and into the sieges. Of which there were 3, including Williamites and Jacobite armies.

There’s lots of interactivity with drawers you can pull out to find exhibits, bridges to build, costumes to ‘try’ on. All explained by displays and videos which keeps it interesting.

Once outside in the castle courtyard you can see the ancient historic building and the different areas which housed people with different jobs.  We enjoyed finding out about the masons, but there’s also information about the mint, and the armouries.

In the courtyard you can enjoy castle games like tug of war, quoits and seesaw. Other activities depend on the season.

We enjoyed looking at some of the stands where people were dressed up and telling more about the history. We had a laugh trying to pronounce some of the Irish names on the board.

You can also see down into the ruins of the Great Hall, and walk into it. It’s fascinating to compare to some of the English and Welsh castles we’ve visited.

A visit to King John’s Castle isn’t expensive, so I’d definitely recommend it while on a trip to Limerick.  There’s also a tea room, but it only seemed to be drinks and cakes, so we had to find somewhere else for lunch.

Walk around Limerick

Finding somewhere to eat wasn’t proving to be easy.  Despite it being midweek, there didn’t seem to be a lot of places that looked like businesses open. We passed the Escape Rooms which we didn’t fancy, and the Milk Market although a bit further to walk, was only open weekends.  We ended up eating in a shopping centre food hall which was a bit random. But worked for us for lunch.

Walking that way meant we also saw St Mary’s Cathedral, the Hunt Museum with its colourful horse statues, and I made sure we’d visit the Terry Wogan Statue too which overlooks the River Shannon.

N wanted to get to the swimming pool in the afternoon, so we cut our sightseeing short, and headed back to the hotel.

A couple of the places we’d liked the look of for dinner were booked up so we were a bit stuck again for food in the evening.  We ended up walking into the centre to just find somewhere down the main streets, but in the end decided to let N experience Supermacs which he’d been going on about every time we spotted one (evidently it’s always mentioned on TikTok).  Still it was reasonable food, a good price compared to a restaurant.  And later in the evening when he was still hungry, we went and had dessert in the hotel bar restaurant! Nothing like mixing up the food when you’re on holiday with a teen.

The eating out offer was the one thing I’d like to have had more guidance on in Limerick, especially for places suitable for children (that don’t require dress codes, as we walked out of one place we fancied due to that), or being more visible. There didn’t seem to be one area that we found were it would have lots of choices for restaurants. 

We really enjoyed our fleeting stop in Limerick, before going onto the next stop on our trip.