Granted the Gift of Eloquence – July 1st, 2009

I finally kissed the Blarney stone! This morning we got up early and headed down to the bus station to go out to Blarney. We grabbed some French bread for breakfast and ate on the bus – about a 15 minute or so ride out to Blarney.
The castle was amazing! The grounds were so pretty to walk through, and the castle was beautiful. Of course we took tons and tons of pictures. There were a lot of informative signs and stuff, which I really liked – it’s always more fun to know something about what you’re seeing.

After winding through Blarney castle – there’s a hundred steps to the Stone – we finally made it to the Blarney Stone. We were surprised to find a short line. Unfortunately, today was our first day of real Irish weather…it was cool and rainy…so everything in the castle was wet. To kiss the stone, you have to lay down on your back and grab some bars behind your head, then slide backwards. One guy holds on to you and one guy takes your picture. Unfortunately, it was a little wet when I slid backwards, and not only did I kiss the Blarney Stone but I also hit my nose quite hard on it.

After our famous kisses, we made our way out of the castle, bought our pictures of us kissing it which we couldn’t pass up even though it looks like I have something poured all over myself in mine, and strolled through the castle grounds. We definitely got out my ipod and listened to our new favorite Irish song “Galway Girl” – there’s even a video of Anna doing an Irish jig….haha.

By the time we made it out of the grounds it had started to rain pretty hard, so we headed back to Cork on the bus. Sightseeing day in and day out has started to take it’s toll, so we bought lunch at a grocery store and headed back to the hotel to watch Wimbledon, eat lunch, and take nice long naps.

After our naps we headed back into city centre to do some shopping, which was fun. Penneys is an awesome store – I bought a cute dress and a smaller purse for going out. We decided to have another relaxing night since there’s not much to do in Cork and we were running out of money and didn’t want to withdraw more Euros for just a day. We bought bread, cheese, and grapes at the grocery store, and ate back at the hotel and used the internet for a long time. It was quite nice. Then we just relaxed in the room and watched Gossip Girl and the Italian Job on television before calling it a night. Overall it was quite nice.

I definitely think Blarney made up for Cork not being too exciting. It was really great. Besides, we didn’t really realize how exhausted we really were, so Cork was a nice break. Tomorrow we head back to Dublin and fly back to London! Long day of travel ahead.