Ireland, 2010

December 10, 2010

Cashel -> Killarney

The hotel room was c-c-c-cold for most of the night, despite the fact that they brought in an extra heater due to the
unseasonably cold weather. After breakfast, we discovered that the parking lot was too icy to get the car out of... not good!
Luckily, the hotel was right in the middle of town - so we walked up to the local tourist attraction - the Rock of Cashel.
This is an awe-inspiring ruin of a castle and church, dating back to the 7th century.

by lunch time, the parking lot had melted enough to get on our way, so we pointed ourselves to the next item on our list,
the Blarney Castle. I wasn't prepared for this to be anything more than a tourist attraction, but was pleasantly surprised.
As ruins go, this one is remarkably well-preserved, with much of the structure intact. I am constantly amazed by the
engineering that went into producing things like a 4-story spiral stone staircase....
We both kissed the Blarney Stone, a slightly scary and bizarre activity which involves lying on your back on one of the
castle walls (4 stories up), and then leaning backwards over the wall, to kiss a stone on the outer wall - well, see the pictures below...

After Blarney, we drove into Killarney, which we decided to make our base for the next 2 days.