We took a girls weekend away to the Castle, hoping to get away from it all, and as much as we were looking forward to the trip it unfortunately wasn’t what we expected. Karen was great to communicate with prior to arrival, with directions etc. She took time to meet us when we arrived and showed us around the property and explained everything that we would need.
There are 5 reception rooms downstairs plus a very large kitchen opening out to a nice courtyard overlooking the river. The setting is really beautiful and we made the most of it, as we had lovely weather which is rare in Ireland! –The Kitchen is not fully private though, also used by the owners of the property. Which brings us on to the disappointing part of the stay, this is advertised as an “Entire home/apt” but this is not the case. You are only renting 2 bedrooms in the tower on the second floor, the first floor living space is occupied by Karen’s Uncle, which is not mentioned anywhere before booking.
We unfortunately had an altercation with said uncle on the night of our stay, at 22.30 we heard very loud banging on the main door of the castle, the uncle had come home and had trouble opening the main door of the castle, we were instructed by Karen that we should not put the chain on the door so he could get in, but we would not notice he was there. Well we certainly did notice he was there, 2 of our group – 4 girls on our own I might add, went to the door to see what the fuss was about. A little scared, but one opened the door and the uncle barged in, and slammed the door shouting that he lived here…he swore at them and stormed off upstairs. We were all a little unnerved by the whole situation. We tried not to let it bother us, but it did put a damper on our night away. We did mention to Karen when she came back about 12.30am, she was surprised and said she would have a word with her uncle, but nothing else was mentioned until after we had left the next day.
Needless to say it was not the stay we expected, and it should most certainly not be advertised as “Entire home/Apt” as this is definitely not the case. It was an expensive weekend for us that was not value for money. Between all of us we use Airbnb a lot, and we agree this was the worst experience we have had, not to take away from the beauty of the building and the surroundings, but not our idea of a get-away from it all.