Traveling through Cork

I love to travel, but this weekend I remembered just how exhausting it can be. After staying up late on Thursday night/Friday morning but not sleeping all that late (since I had a 1 pm class. I know 11:30 is late by most standards, but not by mine, especially when I'm up until 3:30), I had to get up early to catch a bus to Cork from Limerick at 8:35 am. But since we caught such an early bus we got to Cork at 10 am. After a quick check of the bus times to Blarney, Katie, Lauren, Brittany and I decided to go check in at our hostel (Sheilas, only about a five minute walk from the bus station) to dump our backpacks before traveling to Blarney.

The Cork bus station, fulfilling all of our travel needs.

Since I was out the entire bus ride to Cork I was actually able to stay awake for the short ride to Blarney. It only took about 25 minutes, and the scenery was amazing. Obvious I know, but I'm still kind of in awe of how green it always is here. And we had perfect weather. It could have been a few degrees warmer, but asking for heaven isn't exactly realistic.

Blarney was great. It was beautiful. We wandered around the castle a little bit before actually heading up - where we were met by the Stairs from Hell. They were spiral and skinny and spelled instant doom for claustrophobic me. And Lauren. And Brittany, who's afraid of heights. Only Katie was OK, and she did a pretty good job, inadvertently, of scaring all three of us the entire way up. But once we got up, what a sight to see. You could see for miles, including pretty much the whole town of Blarney and the Blarney House, from up there.

But if I thought the stairs were scary, I was sure in for a treat when I went to do what everyone who goes to Blarney does: kiss the Blarney Stone. Except when you kiss the stone, as pictured below, you have to lean over backwards while laying on your back, over a hole with only two steel bars separating you from the ground 150 feet away.

Only afterward did I realize how high up I had been. And that there was literally very little separating me from the fatal drop. I'm happy I didn't know then what I know now, or that picture might never have happened. But the guy who held me was attractive (what little of him I remember since my mind was preoccupied with other things, like not dying). And he was young and sturdy, not old and weak.

Me kissing the Blarney Stone. Weeee!!

After we all kissed the stone, is was Round 2 with the scary stairs. I like to think we did a better job the second time around, but maybe not considering that Lauren was clutching the railing with both hands, making hilarious remarks that almost resulted in Brittany and me missing a few steps. We then wandered towards the Blarney house, which we couldn't enter since it's closed during the off season. But it was still amazing to look at. I kind of expected, or rather hoped, Mr. Darcy (or another Jane Austen equivalent, aka Mr. Knightly, Captain Wentworth or Henry Tilney - no man from Sense and Sensibility or Mansfield Park is worth dreaming of) to walk out the front doors and onto the pebble drive in order to sweep me off my feet and into a life of luxury and true love for ever and ever, amen. Yes, I realize this is unrealistic. And yes, I realize Jane Austen is English and not Irish. But the only lesson this line of thinking teaches me is that I have to go to Bath, London, or the Lake District in order to meet Mr. Jane-Austen-Made-Me-Perfect-and-I-Love-You. So what's the point?

Yes, in some part of my mind I do expect my future husband to own property that looks like this. I know it's unrealistic and I don't care.

We decided to call it a day in Blarney and took a bus back to Cork, where we were finally allowed in our room. It was actually really cute, and we had a good view of the city. The room was smaller than the hostel rooms in Wurtzburg, Passau, or Fussen, but it was also nicer than all but Passau. And let's face it, it's hard to come close to the awesomeness that is Passau, so I call it a pretty darn good pick from hostelbookers.com. And it was extremely close to the city and the shopping street. Which is all that matters. We spent the evening shopping until we were all too hungry to function when we found a nice little restaurant that supplied me with my first real meal not prepared by yours truely since I've been in Ireland. And what did I order? A ginormous hamburger with salad and potatoe wedges. A-ma-zing. We finished dinner around 7 pm, headed back to the hostel, and all passed our by 9 pm. Yeah, we're cool. Or exhausted (as I mentioned earlier).

Our hostel room.

This morning we went and saw St. Finbarr's Cathedral and Elizabeth's Fort before any of the stores were open. But you better believe at noon we were outside a store ready to go in - it was just chance that we were walking by a store we had already picked out when it opened. We didn't stalk it like crazy engaged women do bridal shops when they have sales. When we were done shopping, it was off to home sweet home, where we all dumped our stuff ready for a nice relaxing evening in our cold as anything home. But it's still home. Even if the hostel room and buses were 15 degrees warmer.

St. Finbarr's Cathedral. It really was pretty, even if we didn't go in.

One of my 7 Wonders of the World. FCUK: French Connection, UK. Spectacular.

Brittany and me with the statue that made the day, and probably the trip for both of us. It's too long of a story to explain to anyone except perhaps Kate, but suffice to say it has to do with The History Boys. And says "Lest We Forget."

Kim