Cork, Blarney Castle and Howth!

Now successfully in Dublin, we have had a couple pretty eventful days – not in the sense that a lot went on, more so that we actually went places and did stuff. At least quite a bit more than we did in Glasgow. Makin moves.

Thursday we went to Cork and Blarney Castle! YAY! Cork is a cute city, primarily for shopping it seemed like but we walked around for a bit and got some food. The bus to Cork from Dublin took almost 4 hours, which I knew beforehand but I didn’t really think it through – it was a pretty long bus ride. Unfortunately, a good chunk of it was spent studying for the GRE. Yeahhh, remember when I said this trip would be unhindered by school-related things…total fallacy. All sorts of fail on that one. But back to Cork! We took a bus into Blarney from Cork and wandered around some shops and such there. Holly got her wool sweater that she has been patiently waiting to get the whole trip and I got Guinness infused dark chocolate. Mmmm. Little known fact about me: I sneeze when I eat relatively dark dark chocolate. Oh and at the sun. Good times…


Cork

Next we headed over to the castle! Unfortunately we had to pay to get in (8 Euro with student discount – yes, we are still milking the student discounts) but it was totally worth it. It’s so pretty! < the whole area not just the castle. If we had had more time/my body wasn’t dying, there were these nature walks you could do that would be pretty cool. We walked around for a bit then went up into the castle. They had each room labeled for what it was used for which was really awesome to see. Boggles my mind how anyone stayed warm – each room was like a wind tunnel when the wind blew…and it’s ‘summer’. We climbed a spiral staircase, in which rooms jutted out from at random levels, up to the top of the castle where the kissing of the Blarney Stone occurs. In order to do this you have to awkwardly contort yourself backwards down a hole (so that you are basically looking down at the ground 100 feet below) holding onto two posts and kiss one little part of a stone. There’s a guy to guide you to the right area of the stone and probably to make sure you don’t keep sliding down. Holly and Kayla participated in the kissing of the stone but I opted out primarily due to the uncertainty of being able to feasibly get back up without my hip locking…seeing that I had the rest of the day to get through walking around and no pain killers, it seemed like a good choice.


Blarney Castle!!




Some other awesome thing


Fun in the castle!

Back in Cork instead of getting on the bus we were originally going to catch, we spontaneously went to a burger place Kayla had been to before. Delicioussss. Holly and I keep talking about what food we want when we get home (hunk o’ meat and vegetables *cough cough*) and it has always been focused around meat…PROTEIN, since we clearly aren’t getting much of it here. Hence the burgers. I got an Italian inspired one with Parma ham, moz cheese and basil pesto. They come out with a little flag of the country that the burger was inspired from. There was a French one that had brie and dijon mustard, I almost got that instead. Oh and their fries were ridiculously good too.

Just so that I don’t ramble on for too long, I’m going to move on to yesterday at Howth. We ended up meeting up with a kid we met at our hostel in Edinburgh who just happens to be here in Dublin the same time we are! He’s from Minnesota and is super chill. Based on the weather yesterday, it definitely goes to say that you should never trust weather forecasts here in Ireland – they lie and never know what in the heck is going to happen. Case and point: it was supposed to be cold and thunder storming today, so what happens? It was gorgeous. I dressed in a ridiculous amount of layers because I was freezing in Cork (will finally get my 2 jackets back tomorrow that I left here 4 weeks ago!!) that I clearly didn’t end up needing. Maybe one of these days I will actually dress appropriately….maybe.

So Howth is basically a fishing town that is way cooler than most fishing towns because it has mini Cliffs of Moher-esque cliffs – automatically making it 50 times more beautiful that it would be anyway for being on the coast. We traipsed down some trails and rather steep areas to get to the water area then climbed around some more on the rocks and hung out for a bit. Afterwards we followed the walking trail that went back to the town to get fish and chips!! They were a whole lotta greasy goodness.


Howth!




Sooo pretty



We are going to the Guinness Storehouse today before heading to Kayla’s friends mom’s house for the day/night – both of which will be fun. I’m apparently trying to fight off a cold or something because my throat has started hurting, cross your fingers for it getting better soon! OH! Holly, Kayla and I bought midnight showing tickets for Harry Potter 7 Part II for next Thursday night! YAY! SO excited but super bummed that this is the legitimate end to it all. It will be epic though.

Fun Fact: Kissing the Blarney stone means you will have the "gift of gab" - basically that you will speak eloquently from then on.