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 just got done with a French course this week, so now I have more free time after work and decided to do some soul-searching. On Wednesday, I tried to go to the beach but I ended up meeting a low-barrier wall with a steep drop-off of at least 50 feet. There wasn’t an entrance to the shore for a mile, so I realized I made a mistake in picking a location on Google maps and wouldn’t make it to the shore that day. It wasn’t all bad though beacuse I got to see a nice park, and I took a really pretty picture of a marsh. I love late afternoons when the sun is at the right angle where any picture you take is magic.
Before I walked back for the day, I decided to explore the area a bit. I walked down to the nearby park and saw lots of teenagers taking a group photo – possibly a school outing or something. I also saw a family playing frisbee. I walked down the laid path for a while, and when I couldn’t get a view of the shoreline, I walked back for the day.
On Wednesday, I took the bus to Seapoint Beach. It was an hour walk so I decided that I’d rather take the bus and spend some more time at the beach. I can’t swim and I hate sand, but I love listening to the waves roll in and out. I like closing my eyes and watch the sunlight fuse into different colors as the white light refracts on my eyelashes. When my eyes are fully shut, I can see the hues of the sunlight shining through my eyelids. Usually it’s bright red and orange, but if I twitch my eyes a little, the hues turn into shades of blue, green, and hot violet. And when the lights are overwhelming, I open my eyes and center my gaze on the glowing rocks of the shoreline, and that grounds me. I love the sun, and I always try to get some sunlight every day. I also like hearing the waves get stronger as high tide approaches, somewhat like a symphony reaching a dramatic conclusion; battering endlessly on indifferent rocks. I left the beach when it got cold, but I also walked around a lot before I left. It was a nice, quiet time to reflect on things.
On my way back from the beach, I accidentally missed a stop so I had to walk down another block. But right next to my drop-off I noticed an ice cream stand that looked good. It was called Teddy’s ice cream, and they had lots of great flavors. I chose the Biscoff Crunch because I’ve had sort of a craving for Biscoff lately and it’s trendy to use Biscoff in the desserts world right now. For an ice cream, it was very light and smooth. It had a great texture, but it’s nothing compared to Murphy’s downtown.
That’s all for my especially long post this week! I’m going to continue to have more fun adventures on my own from now on!