Ireland is Green!

After being misidentified is Irish, I was pretty excited to get to Ireland, as you can see:

The following in an abridged excerpt from my journal written that night:

We woke up, had breakfast, and made our way to the Dublin Train Station for a trip to Cork. Well, first we went to the wrong train station. Then we took the tram to the right train station. We got our rail passes validated and made our way to the train...which happened to be full. (What! Such a thing would never happen in italy. They would have just piled us on and we would have stood the entire way. What has civilization done to society?) No room! They said there was no room on the train. I still don't know if I believe them. So we had two hours until the next one, so we walked around this little outskirt of Dublin, saw the Guiness factory.....yeah. Our train finally came, and we left through the Irish countryside for Cork.

Good thing we brought our stash of McVitties caramel cookies. mmmm....so good. That's seriously all we have eaten for the last two days.

Once we got to Cork, we went about finding the way to Blarney Castle, Amazing Race style. The train station lady told us to go to the bus station, 5 blocks away, who directed us to the right bus...perfect!

Cork is a cute little city. Very clean, a river down the middle...The bus ride was nice, just like the city buses in Rome. Also just like Rome, we got off at the wrong stop. While backtracking, we walked through the town of Blarney and saw the castle in the distance. A castle! Not just a big in the middle of the city castle like the Tower of London, but a straight up in the middle of the forest castle. So cool!

The coolest thing was...we were able to explore it! We paid our entry free and they just let you go! We climbed into the sentry posts - both human and dog - and crept on our hands and knees through the dungeon. As we scaled the castle we were free to climb on the walls, peek out the windows, all unsupervised. It wasn't too crowded either, which made you kinda feel that you were discovering it all for your own. Very cool. It was literally a dream come true. I've wanted to do this all my life!

It was so much fun climbing and playing in a real castle that I almost forgot the whole point of going specifically to the Blarney Castle. The Blarney Stone! Its gift is eloquence to all those who kiss it. As you can tell, it has totally worked. To give it a kiss, you have to lay down and kiss the stone upside down while hanging over the battlement. It's a pretty intense process (there's a guy helping you) but all totally worth it.
I need to underline the fact that I totally went for it as I kissed the stone. No going half way. All the way. Go big or go home.

We played on the battlements and explored rooms before we had to leave. Same process, only backwards - bus to Cork, walk to train station, where we missed our train by like two minutes. Blast! We looked up at the schedule and saw there was another Dublin train in like a half hour. Not too bad...until a half hour later when we realized that was the arrival of the train, not the departure. That only made me feel slightly stupid, compounded by the fact that I had to ask the train guy three times in order to understand his accent. I guess I'm not too Irish after all...

Another ride through the Irish country, with tons of green and cows on either side, accompanied by lots of U2, Tonic, and the Cranberries by my IPod. I have been doing my best to make myself associate Irish music with Ireland, that way whenever I hear these bands in the future, I will think of the beautiful green fields of Ireland (it worked, by the way.)

We found ourselves back in Dublin, but at the faraway train station. That's ok. We had return tram tickets. Well...one. I couldn't find the other one, so I rode illegally. No European trip is complete without breaking the law! (This is something that would be repeated several times throughout our trip.)

Overall assessment of Cork and the Blarney Castle: LOVED it. On my next trip to Ireland, I plan on renting a car, which I think will make it easier to explore the country more, and see more out of the way castles and other impressive sights that were somewhat hard to get to on public transportation. We only had two days in Ireland, so we only got a taste, but it sure was a good one. mmmmm