Cork/Blarney

I spent the weekend in Cork. Nine of us went total. That is far too big of a group to be productive at anything. It was fun though, once everyone was in agreement on what to do and how to get it done. Which took a long time.

Saturday we went to Blarney, which didn't take long to decide. But when we should go, and how to get there was a chore. But, once we got there, we had a blast. It's beautiful! The climb up to the top of Blarney is a narrow winding staircase. Narrow, like I was almost too wide for it. But they have all the rooms open that you can wonder around. It was hard to imagine that that was the life of luxury. Especially now that some of the floors are gone, and the stone is crumbling. But once it was tiled, and painted and beautiful. The castle is surrounded by 8 acres of grass and tree, and cows. The Blarney house looked wonderful, but it's only open two months a year. And, I didn't kiss the Blarney stone. I had no desire to do it, or stand in line for it. It's supposed to give you the gift of flattery, and I'm not sure if you know this, but that's a God given gift of mine. And I can just picture the guys who work there peeing on it after work. After the stone we caught a bus back to Cork and had a delicious and reasonably priced dinner. 12 euro for crab rigatone. 18 dollars. Not so cheap, but a good deal considering how pricey everything was. I was all for cooking in the hostel, but no one else liked that plan. One of the girls ordered fajitas out of curiousity. Clearly the cook had never had fajitas before, because the beef was cooked in a sweet barbeque sauce, with some corn, tortillas, sour cream and chili sauce. It was a good attempt though. Not that she would have known good Mexican food, being from Boston and everything. haha. Everyone then wanted to go out. It was about 11pm and felt like 3. We all got up at 5 to catch the bus, and had been going all day. We did not go out.

The hostel was pretty nice. I'm not sure what it is with this country, but none of the hostels believe in having much security for their luggage lock ups. We just put our bags in an unlocked room, near the front desk, but no one paid attention or made you prove the bag was yours.. sketch. I kept my valuables with me. They had free breakfast though, and our room had it's own bathroom. Best part was, I didn't that I would be infested with fleas or something from being there. It's always a bonus.

Sunday we decided to just walk around Cork. Since the bus systems are more irregular and we didn't have many options of when to get back to Dublin. In the morning everything was closed. They don't believe in opening early and staying open late in the country. And Sunday mornings everyone is at mass, or should be. We walked to University College Cork. It was a beautiful campus. Seemed like a pretty cool place. It's surrounded by parks and has a river running through it. We met some nice old Irish men who told us about their dogs, and had them do tricks for us. I was attacked by a cute little puppy who pounced me and licked my face continuously. I miss dogs.

Cork thinks it should be the capital of Ireland, instead of Dublin. I'm not sure why, as it's not nearly had metropolitan or business oriented. Most people say they don't like Cork. I liked it, but it isn't that exiciting. I'm glad we went. I'm not sad I didn't kiss that stone. And I know smaller groups are easier to travel with, or at least big groups that split into smaller ones.

http://s489.photobucket.com/albums/rr254/Theleaningkar/BlarnyCork/