After we left Macroom we drove the rest of the way to Cork, where we stayed one night. I have no pictures of Cork because I didn't really like it. It was too big of a city. (Good thing I avoided Dublin!) All we did while we were there was go to a pub. And the next morning we were so stressed out about finding out way out of that blasted place that we didn't do anything but drive. We got out as soon as we could and drove on to Blarney Castle, which, despite my expectations for it to be a huge tourist trap, was really very neat. We were free to roam around the castle on our way up to the top, which was really fun. Here are a few pictures. The first is the view from the top of the castle. The second is part of the inside kind of. There used to be a floor between the windows.I think the bottom floor was the family room and the top was the dining hall.
There were also beautiful gardens there. There was a river running through them (which people throw a lot of coins in for some reason), and lots of neat things. Crazy walks, wishing steps with a very low ceiling . . . just a lot to explore. There was one place called the "Witch's Kitchen" where someone had built a little hut of stones, with a chimney in the back of it. You could tell it was really old, because sometime after it was built a Yew tree started to grow on top of it and the tree was huge! It was hard to get a good picture of though. My dad climbed over the fence and balanced himself pretty precariously on a tree limb (probably to me lecturing him about not falling or he would break the camera . . .). There were also some really neat flowers. I know the red, berry looking flowers are fuschia. As for the white, bell-shaped clusters of flowers with the pink leaves, I have no idea what those are. They were gorgeous though. If anyone knows, please tell me the name of that plant.
And of course, kissing the Blarney Stone. Stupid, touristy thing, but oh well, my dad talked me into it. No, it does not give you good luck to kiss it, thank you very much. It's supposed to give you the gift of Blarney, or for those who don't know what that is, the best synonym I can think of is the gift of gab, or B.S. The first picture is of Blarney Castle, taken from the ground. If you see the little white spot where there's a hole at the top, that's where the blarney stone is. The second is just after I kissed it. You grab the bars, a guy holds on to you so you don't fall, and you slide back and lean over the gap to kiss the stone on the far wall.
Somewhere along the way, we went on a hunt for some random castles, so here are a few pictures. There were a lot of random castles in Ireland. In fact, I got used to them. So after I got back I kept seeing random castles out of the corner of my eye that turned out to be grain silos and things.
After we left Blarney we drove on to County Galway. We wandered around County Clare for a while on the way back north to try to go through the Burren. We didn't get to see much of it, because we only drove around the edge, but my dad was pretty amazed at all of the rock. Something I thought was interesting, though I don't think you can see it in any of these, is that even though that was all rock, people had still sectioned it off with stone fences, and you could see those fences, gray against gray, going up those limestone hills. So, anyway, here are some pictures.
Here is a castle we passed by in Kinvara, County Galway, on the way to Spiddal. This is Dunguaire castle. We didn't get to go inside because a Mideival Banquet was about to start.
It was pretty late by the time we made it to Spiddal, County Galway, so we didn't really do anything. We did drive to town to get some food. Spiddal is pretty close to Galway City, but this is still around the heart of the Gaelic speaking areas (Gaeltachts). So, this is one of the things I saw there. I thought the celtic knots were neat, and it said water in Gaelic, "uisce," which I could actually read. I was pretty exicted. Then my dad laughed at me when I took the picture, and pointed it out to some Irish boys who were walking by. Gee, thanks dad.
