Ireland, Day 4

The end of another long day. We ate breakfast at our hotel this morning & then hit the road. We first headed to Kilkenny National Park. It was gorgeous. We drove through it, & then stopped at Muckross house, which is right in the middle of the park. While we stopped there we all got a pastry at a little nearby shop. It was pretty random… After the park, we headed out & tried to find a few more castles. We couldn’t find Dunloe Castle but found Aghadoe Castle… Which was like a couple of stones. Haha. Afterwards, we headed to Blarney Castle.

Blarney Castle is home to the Blarney Stone. Apparently you are supposed to kiss it & doing say may give you the gift of the gab. Basically, you kiss it & might speak more eloquently. Anyways, we wanted to see the castle, but didn’t really want to kiss the stone. We found out that you had to climb to the top of the castle & then hang upside down, with the help of an attendant, in order to kiss the stone. Needless to say, we decided not to do it. It took nearly two hours to make it to the castle, & we arrived around 5pm. It was an amazing castle. It is definitely one of my favorites. So we wandered around for a bit & then me & Ang decided to climb to the top.

It was quite the climb! The stone staircase was very narrow & twisty. The most amazing part about it was every so often you could get off the stairs & wander through rooms in the castle. We went into the murder hole, the dungeon, & many other rooms. We were nearly to the top of the castle when the stairs narrowed considerably. I was holding my camera in one hand & gripping a rope they had strung up the center in my other. A few times I honestly thought I was going to fall. I could just imagine myself rolling all the way to the bottom. It was pretty scary! So we finally made it to the top & there was no one else up there besides the attendant that helps you hang backwards & upside down to kiss the stone. Plus the other guy that operates a camera. Apparently you could buy the photo at the gift shop… I was pretty excited to have made it to the top of the castle so me & Ang decided to kiss the stone.

It was pretty scary! There was a gap between the roof of the castle & the wall which is where you hung down. They had installed two metal bars that you held & the guy helped get you into position & gave you extra stability. So you sat with your back to the gap, leaned back, grabbed the bars, & lowered yourself down. Once in that position, the stone wasn’t right in front of your face, but was like six inches lower. So you had to sort of scoot back & strain your neck… Then you could give it a smooch. Getting into the position wasn’t too bad, but once I was hanging back & realized I had to lean much further down, I panicked for a split second. But, it was over before I knew it. We tipped the attendant (our Ireland book told us too…) & went back down the stairs (fortunately it was a different staircase that wasn’t quite as narrow…).

I was actually pretty proud of myself for doing it. Later I went in the gift shop & got a little Blarney Stone trinket so I could remember today. Anyways, we left Blarney Castle & headed to our hotel. Tonight we are staying at the Blue Haven Hotel in Kinsale. It is a cute little town. Probably the biggest town we have stayed in so far in London. Obviously Dublin will be much larger… We ate dinner at a pub down the street called Ned Kelly. It was pretty good. Our waiter was pretty adorable. Tomorrow we want to go on a boat trip out to the Skelligs Islands, but the winds have been so high that boats haven’t been traveling to the islands for the last month. They are hoping that the weather will cooperate tomorrow, but probably not. We have to get up at 7am in order to call. If the weather is good, we’ll go out on the boat, otherwise we will head to Cork. Well, that’s it for today. Night!