Blarney

If I'm gonna be real with you, I enjoyed Blarney but unfortunately my visit was tarnished by the fact that I drank way too much and was nauseous all day. :( Anyways that is why I don't have very many pictures. I fail.

Okay so we took a half hour busride from Cork to Blarney, and thank goodness it was no longer because I would have been "that girl" who got sick on the bus. We got off and were sent out to explore for two hours. We walked the path to the castle in the misty, gray rain and remarked on how the weather made the story of a witch who lived in a cave and gifted Maccarthy the stone a lot more believable. We expected her to jump out at any second, the river and green grass and moss were absolutely beautiful in contrast to the cloudy skies. The castle itself has a number of rooms you can go into, and each one has a sign describing what it would have been back in the day, a girls bedroom or the kitchen for example. We walked up an increasingly skinnier spiral staircase to get to the top, where you didn't want to stand too near the edge for fear of being blown off by the wind. I didn't realize that you had to 1. lay down to kiss the stone, 2. lean backwards and 3. do it in about 30 seconds. There was an old irish guy funneling people through and he just kept repeating "okay, next. lay down here. hands there. okay your okay, head back. kiss the stone. up you go! okay next" It was actually rather terrifying because you have to just put your hands on these bars and lean your head back into the air and kiss the stone. A couple of my friends said they just grazed it but I gave that thing a real big smooch. With the lack of interest in my classes this quarter I need the gift of gab to write all these papers. After kissing the stone we took another skinny skinny staircase down and went off in search of lunch. Unfortunately I was too sick to eat, but everybody else said their food was absolutely delicious, and the prices were so cheap. We picked a good spot. Then it was back to the bus where I got my nap music going (A Fine Frenzy, check them out. Her voice is gorgeous and the lyrics are often really clever) pulled my hat over my head and passed out for the next 4 hours. After we got back to campus we all walked really slowly home and immediately I went to bed. exhausted.

It was quite nice to get out of Dublin, and like I said, Cork has a lot more character in my opinion. Overall the weekend was good, but like one of my friends said, "Cork demolished you. Cork: 2 Erin : 0"