Travelling in and Around Cork

              Monday was Blarney Castle and Blarney Stone day which actually turned out to have much more than I was expecting to do there. My handy dandy Rick Steves’ Guidebook didn’t have great things to say about Blarney Castle and not gonna lie Rick Steves usually knows what he’s talking about, and I’ve used his books a lot over the years. Well I have to say Rick Steves was wrong. He said it was basically a touristy mess where people mindlessly line up to kiss the Blarney Stone. He forgot to mention there is so much on the castle grounds that you can spend hours after kissing the stone wandering around and looking at the stuff there. I’ll give you some background first before going into what we did though. Blarney Castle is a Jacobean 17^th century castle that has stone at the very top, The Blarney Stone, which if you kiss you receive “the gift of gab”. Lots of celebrities have come over the years to kiss the stone, but the claim to fame I think they are most proud of there is that Winston Churchill kissed the stone and then went on to be a good public speaker. Well I waited in line up some very narrow and steep stairs (Like how did they carry trays down those stairs from the kitchen?!) to get to the top of Blarney Castle. One man who went before our group kissed the stone and his little girls asked him why he did that, to which he replied “Well that’s what we do when we are in Ireland, we kiss stones.” Our laughter across the way made him hang his head and smile, but we appreciated his statement! Anyways I did get to the Blarney stone, where you get to hang upside down clutching onto two railings to kiss the very bottom of the stone. They do clean the stone by the way, every few people to make sure its not gross much to my relief.

Blarney Castle

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

              So after going down some less narrow and steep stairs, and seeing some closed off passages of the castle I hadn’t planned on buying the souvenir picture. Its pretty reminiscent of roller-coaster snapshots, but as it turns out my friend who I entrusted with my canon to get pictures of me kissing the stone didn’t actually turn the camera on! It’s okay because one of my other friends captured the picture with their phone but the best one was actually the one they took for me, so I ended up forking over the ten euro just to have a good picture! A cheeky old man then came up to me and asked me if I was the Blarney stone, which means at least I can get the attention of Irish boys but maybe not the ones I had in mind.

              We left the castle area and moved on to the Poison Garden, which sounds way cooler than it was. I have to give them props though because they did include a range of plants included Wolfs bane and Mandrake root (adapted from Harry Potter, the sign said). From there we went to the Blarney House, a Victorian Manor looking house that sadly wasn’t open to the public yet. We did sneak into the back garden near the side of the house, but didn’t really gain anything from our espionage because there wasn’t much but a walking path. We grabbed a really cheap and warm lunch from a café inside the grounds and then planned the rest of our day because there were so many things everyone wanted to see. We went towards the walking steps, which if you walk down them and then back up backwards with your eyes closed only thinking about your wish it will supposedly come true. I, of course did this and it was actually pretty fun because I almost fell about 3 times. A couple people in my group also did the walk, which was as funny to see. We went past to the Druid ruins (dun-dun-dun), the sacrificial altars, and faerie rings which were just kind of fun to see. We took a boardwalk to the Icehouse (a cellar for ice storage), the horse graveyard (so much of a letdown because it sounded like there should be bones or something at least creepy), the dungeon (which was creepy and was like how I think of spelunking probably is like), and the fern garden (which was gorgeous, and I didn’t know there were so many different types of ferns!). After that we headed back down into town to catch a bus back into Cork, and walked through Cork window shopping and got dinner shortly after at an Italian restaurant.

Blarney House

The Druid's circle

The entrance to the wishing steps

The fern garden

              Tuesday we took a bus into Cobh (pronounced Cove), which is the last place the Titanic stopped before sinking and the port where immigrants used leave Ireland from. We met our tour guide Marian who took us along the Titanic trail in Cobh, which does not include that much history from the Titanic but rather the history of Cobh mixed with stories. We were told about Annie Moore, who was the first recorded Irish Immigrant to enter at Ellis Island and who left from Cobh, or Queenstown as it was known then. We walked up the harbor towards the White Star Line Titanic Museum (which I wanted to go in, but was too pricey and we didn’t have enough time anyway). We saw a Lusitania memorial monument, which is magnificent piece in the middle of a main square, and then a Titanic memorial which was a tiny nub comparatively. Then we moved towards St. Colman’s Cathedral where Marian left us in a flurry of historical information and places we should see before leaving Cobh. The Cathedral was beautiful with amazing stained glass that is so colorful and stone walls that are preciously carved into intricate patterns. A lot of pictures later, I was back outside walking downhill (extremely steep!) looking at what people call The Deck of Cards which is a bunch of tightly put together buildings in a variety of colors. We found a café that Marian recommended, and then explored the square we were in. After stopping by the Titanic museum, which is actually in the old White Star Line office and realizing we couldn’t do the tour we were at a loss of what to do. Thankfully one of our group members remembered there was another museum that we could visit which was close to the bus station we had to meet up at. We went inside but also couldn’t do the tour! We decided to just take a look around the historical plaques outside the museum and I even entered a raffle for a trip for two to come back to Ireland (fingers crossed!).

View of St. Colman's Cathedral

Front of St. Colmans

Inside of St. Colmans

The Deck of Cards

              I wish we could have had more time, maybe even an hour, just to explore Cobh because it seemed like my kind of place. Anyways, we all went back to Cork by bus and then had a little down time at the hostel before going into town again. This time we choose an Asian restaurant and the fried rice was so good! Menglin told me that it was pretty authentic food as she had been already and still wanted to come back with a couple of us. We had to finish off our history lessons by ourselves this time around, so after dinner I pulled up the video and took notes from my bunk bed. It wasn’t bad, but it did take a while.

              Today we left Kinlay House Cork by a very small coach bus (we had to cram our bags and ourselves in) to drive a little under 2 hours to Killarney. Killarney is medium-sized town that is west and a little bit north from Cork close to the Ring of Kerry, which we are touring later this week. We are staying a hostel called Neptune’s and this time around have girls with 3 to a room. We already went out for a café lunch and window shopped around town stopping into a couple of places. We went to the edge of town to see St. Mary’s Cathedral and grabbed gelato coming back. We a have a meeting with our professor later today, but I think staying here will be a good time. Till next time!