I kissed the Blarney Stone!

This past weekend, Caitlyn and I took a bus down to southern Ireland to see County Cork. The bus ride was long enough, 4 hours! When we got to Cork it was beautiful! The city was right on the water and all the houses were painted different bright colors. We had a little trouble finding our hostel, no one knew where it was and we trekked up and down cobble-stone hills trying to find the place.

We finally got to the hostel, on the last hill we climbed! We checked in and decided to look around the city. There was a christmas fair with dancing turkies and food vendors everywhere! The weather was also pretty nice, whenever we look at the weather channel it says awful weather but we always manage to luck out and miss the rain/snow/wind.

On saturday, we booked a tour that would take us through County Cork and up to the Blarney Castle. The tour was small, only 8 of us which made it nice and friendly. The roads were really icy so we did our tour backwards, we headed to the castle first. When we got there, the icy covered everything there was a fog. The place looked like a scene from the Secret Garden.

Unfortunately the pictures can only be inserted landscape style

We went into the castle and it was pretty cool, there were small rooms everywhere and the icy had formed on the stairs so it was pretty slippery. To get to the top we had to climb up these narrow spiral stone steps that just seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as we climbed higher. When we got to the top the view was amazing. We could see for miles, even with the fog. The view looked over the castle gardens and the stables. I would have loved to live on that property.



Caitlyn kissing the stone

It was pretty scary on the top of the castle, it was icy and the guard rails were low. But the views were great and kissing the stone was something I can now cross off my list of things to do before I kick the bucket =]

When we left the castle, we walked around the grounds and everything was pretty magical with the ice covering everything. There were giant trees that we could climb and paths that lead through gardens and the woods. There were "wishing steps" that if you walked up them and back down with your eyes closed, your wish would come true within a year. There was also a witch stone that was in the shape of a witch's face.

When we left Blarney, we got back on the bus and headed to a town called "Cobh" which is really pronounced "Cove". The irish language doesn't use the letter V so when you see "bh" together, it's pronounced like a V. Cobh was the last stop that the Titanic made before it's journey to America.

The town itself was also really pretty. It was a fisherman's town and there were little houses and shops that lined the road that followed the shoreline. We walked up a hill to St. Coleman's Cathedral. It was so big inside and the stained glass windows were beautiful! The view from the top of the hill was amazing as well.

After spending an hour or so in the town, we got back on the bus and made our way to the last stop on the tour, Kinsale. On our way there we took a boat across the bay to get to the other side of the penninsula. It was pretty interesting being on a bus on a boat, Caitlyn had never done it before and I hadn't done it for about 10 or more years probably. When we got to the other side, the bus drove through the country and made our way to Kinsale which was another water-town. It wasn't made up of fisherman, it was more upscale, almost like visitng the Cape.

There was a hill we could hike called Breakheart Hill, we climbed to the top and got a whole view of the penninsula and the town. The wet and icy hike was deffinitely worth it, even though it was getting colder and dark.

All in all the weekend was great, we got to see southern ireland and the weather held out for us. I got to kiss the Blarney Stone and see the ocean. In a few days we head to Belfast and are doing another tour on saturday through Derry and some other cities.