We woke up yesterday morning to rain and gray, which is probably not going to be an unusual event on this trip. We’re unfortunately having to rush through a few things at the start of the trip – Ireland is a big place and we can’t see it all – so we made a short stop in the morning at Kilkenny Castle, made a detour off of the motorway in Waterford to see some nice crystal, and finally took a bunch of random tiny roads to Blarney Castle outside of Cork. I wasn’t keen to kiss the castle’s famous stone, but was more interested in seeing the gardens and castle ruins. However, once we were a hundred feet in the air at the top of the castle Audrey decided to dangle backwards over empty space to kiss the germy rock, so she is now endowed with whatever magical properties the stone bestows. Magic rocks aside, the castle was a neat one; it’s built on an outcrop so it seems taller than most, there are gaps in the topmost battlements that allow you to look straight down to the ground from 100 feet above (terrifying in a building made hundreds of years ago), and there’s a “murder hole” used for dumping boiling tar on invaders, with what looks like black tar stains all around it to remind you of the awful deaths past combatants must have endured.
After the castle we traversed tiny backroads to get to Killarney, where we’re staying for a couple of nights. The weather forecast calls for sun, so with any luck we’ll be able to see Killarney National Park and the Ring of Kerry before moving on.
