Oh Blarney.

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Leaving my castle this morning was indescribably difficult. I thought really hard about grabbing a coat of armor or marble lion statue on my way out as a little souvenir.

Today was a looong day tour to Cork and Blarney Castle. We started at 6:50am and drove for an hour, through Leish County and over the Three Sisters rivers before stopping for some breakfast rolls at a little convenience store in Kilkenny. The tour "mascots" are a bunch of donkeys near this store named Jack, Jenny, and Pier. The group fed these little guys all sorts of junk until we set out again for Cork. Dave, our tour guide, probably knows more about Ireland than any other person in this entire world. He talked, and talked, and talked about Irish history the entire 12 hour tour. I tried to keep notes as we went, so we'll see how well I did. The Irish have little wives tales and folklore stories behind everything. Like the Isle of Man: legend is that there was an evil giant terrorizing the island of Ireland, stealing women and children, and a brave man called Finn McCoy was sent to defeat him. He chased the giant to the edge of the sea and into the water. For good measure he threw a chunk of land at the giants head, which bounced off and landed in the water, forming the Isle of Man.

Other random Irish facts: there are 4 million people in Ireland, 1 million of those people live in Dublin. It is actually has a really temperate climate--the gulf stream keeps the country frost free for 11 months out of the year. Perfect for agriculture which, alon with tourism, is the main source of income for the country. They are pretty serious about their sporting events; hurley being the sport of choice. Many last names begin with O' or Mc, and this means "of the family" or "the son of."

We stopped again at the Rock of Cashel and took a little tour, then headed off for a few more hours to Blarney Castle. I may or may not have taken a little snooze at that point, but I did here bits of pieces of more history, including the fact that the Druids were called the "secret people" because they didn't keep records. They didn't keep records because they considered the past to be sacred. We saw a couple old castles on the way, but our driver called these "AFC's" and wouldn't tell us what that meant until later on. AFC means "another castle," and they call them this because they see them so often and visiting people make such a big deal about them that they are really insignificant to them now. Something interesting about the old Celts is that they actually had very very low crime rates because punishment was much different than anywhere else. Power and social position were so important to them, and solely based on material goods, that if you did something to wrong another person, some of your goods would be taken from you and given to the person you wronged. So they actually came out of it much better than you. Apparently it was a brilliant plan! If someone commited something really terrible, the community would give you a life long "cold shoulder" which eventually became fatal because of isolation and the emotional distress it placed on the perpetrator. One of their other "brilliant" ways of life was a trial marriage period of 1 year and 1 day. If you loved someone, you would marry them and have 366 days to decide if you wanted to stay married to them. If you didn't, there was no shame in leaving your spouse, if you did stay, even just for 367 days and decide you didn't want to stay married, you were stuck. They didn't honor divorces after that point. Interesting.

The shamrock comes from the way that St. Patrick explained the Holy Trinity. Three people, one God. Three leaves, one shamrock.

I'm probably boring everyone, sorry. We finally made it to the Blarney Castle and, I can say with 1000% certainty that I have never seen a more beautiful place than the gardens surrounding the castle. It was like an Eden with brilliant fall colored leaves and "Fairy Glenn's" and random tree stump chairs. I walked around there for about an hour before I even got to the castle, trying to soak up every inch of the scenery! They even have a Poison Garden with real poisonous plants. Anyone watch Vampire Diaries? Well they were even growing Wolfsbane!

On to the Blarney Stone-- they don't actually know the story behind the stone, but it is thought that there was a man set to go on trial for a crime and appear before the courts. The courts weren't too forgiving at that time, so he prayed to an Irish goddess for help. She said to kiss the first stone he saw and that he would be able to talk his way out of punishment. He did so, and was cleared by the courts, so he took that stone and built it into a castle. The way up to the stone is very steep and winding through the castle. Near the top, each step was probably only 2.5-3 inches deep and the passageways super super narrow. They kind rush you through the actual rock kissing process to hurry the line along--there's a guy that sits there and helps you lay down and pull yourself backwards up under a wall to kiss the stone. It's kinda awkward haha. At least I now have the gift of eloquence!

We drove to Cork and had about and hour and a half to walk around the city, so I got some food and stopped at Lush to do a little product testing. Back on the bus and another good nap. Almost everyone on the bus fell asleep at one point because our driver kept the bus nice and toasty and played nice soothing Celtic music. I'm convinced we were all hypontized. He talked more on Irish history clear up until modern times. I didn't realize that the Ireland vs. Northern Ireland reached until so recently. I could write a lot on that, but this post is already pretty long. They do love them some Bill Clinton, those Irish. I guess he was quite instrumental in helping to resolve those issues.

A long walk to my hostel and now I'm tucked in, ready for another long tour day and then a flight back to London tomorrow!

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