Once again, we went exploring for castles on another fun Ireland adventure! We stopped at the Rock of Cashel. It was the original seat of the king of Munster and was used as a fortress for centuries afterwards. It was also the site that Brian Boru, the future high king of Ireland, was crowned. It’s a sacred place with many gravestones marked as early as the 20th century.
A picture of the gravestones at the rock of Cashel.
The next place that we went to was Blarney Castle, and there began my quest to kiss the Blarney stone. The Blarney stone is a magical rock with many myths behind it, but across all the myths it’s said that whoever kisses the stone is bestowed with good luck and good communication skills. I needed to find out whether it was true or not, so I waited in line to kiss the stone. We were at the Blarney castle sight for 2 hours, and it took an hour and 40 minutes just to kiss the stone. The line was huge! But I was determined, and I’m fortunate enough to say that I have the Gift of Gab (hopefully my blog posts will be more elaborate from now on!)
Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of myself with the stone, but the castle view from above was beautiful. I also got to learn a lot about the castle. Blarney castle has spiral staircases that are made so that the defenders from above had a good angle to stab the attackers coming from below. The castle also was filled with trap doors and booby traps such as the “Murder Hole” and an Oubliette, which is a trap door which leads to knowhere for unlucky messengers or trespassers to be deserted forever. It’s such an eerie feeling being surrounded by former death traps and knowing that centuries of seiging took place in this place, and yet we line up as tourists to take a picture and then move on. Wow, that was a lot of ranting; thanks Gift of Gab!
The harp on display at the Guinness Storehouse.
After our tours of the castles on Saturday, we went for a tour of the Guinness storehouse on Monday. We learned a lot about how Guinness is made, the history of Guinness, and we got a complementary beer at the end of the tour. It wasn’t the best pour I’ve had, but you can’t complain with free beer! I can’t wait to see more of what Ireland has to offer!