This weekend, we traveled to Blarney Castle, where we had the opportunity to kiss the Blarney Stone. Unfortunately, the lines to kiss it were very long and the majority of our time at the castle would have been spent waiting in line. Instead, we decided to walk around the estate and explore the nature surrounding the castle. They have a very diverse garden with multiple different themes that all had their own unique energy, but were all beautiful to experience. My favorite of these was probably the fern garden, which housed ferns that supposedly were originally found during the Jurassic period. In addition to seeing the gardens, we walked past the lake where we saw a duck sleeping on the dock there who looked so cute and peaceful, so we decided to let him continue to rest and continue forward.
On our trip, we also stopped by the Rock of Cashel and Cahir Castle. The Rock of Cashel was cool because we don’t have ruins like that at all in the U.S., so I liked seeing how it had deteriorated and the structure that remained. A big group of us ended up sitting on the hill and looking out on the landscape, which was really peaceful and a nice moment of reflection on our journey.
My favorite part of this weekend was Cahir Castle. We took the guided tour and it was so worth it. At some of the places we have visited so far, I wished that we could just go around and explore the area instead of being tied to the tour. Not here. The guide was so amazing and had a ton of really great information about the castle and its history that we never would have learned on our own. We got to walk through and understand the defensive features of the castle, which were meticulously planned out to result in a castle that was deemed to be impregnable, before it was eventually taken by the English. Seeing the flow of the defense plan and the various ways that they could protect their walls, I’m not surprised that the people of the time thought that the castle’s defenses could not be penetrated. I also was really glad to see the more medieval layout and aesthetic of the castle, which is really what I want and expect to see when I hear ‘castle’, but many of the other castles have been more palace-like, due to people of more modern eras living there and modeling the interior to match their taste. Cahir has been largely preserved from the 16th century and was a really unique look into the lives of people from that era for me.
At my internship, I have been taking on more work over the last week, which is really exciting for me. I began creating dashboards for a client to be able to view data about their system easily from an online screen, which I was able to take on mostly alone after my supervisor got me set up with the task. He went to the client’s site for the project this week with my work as something that he needed to set up there, so I am proud and grateful that he placed his trust in me to do that task so that he could be prepared to visit the client. I have also been given the keys to the office and the intern phone this week, after the departure of one of the other interns at the company. I hope that I can continue taking on greater responsibility and learning from my work for the second half of my time there.
Great blog Gideon! I enjoyed reading it and I really appreciated how you blended your travel experiences with personal reflections and professional growth. Your description of Cahir Castle was quite accurate and interesting I also enjoyed the tour because we learned so much we wouldn’t have known on our own. The picture at the Rock of Cashel with the bird is awesome, great photo!