First picture in Cork! 
Cork, along the River Lee. 
English Market 
The Queen came to the English Market. 
English Market entrance. 
Arches to park. 
Down a main street in Cork. 
Statue in park. 
Real talk. 
Cork 
Statue 
Reminds me of Amsterdam 
Main street Cork. 
River Lee 
Steps down to the dirty river. 
Cathedral 
Cemetery 
Coffin 
Church park 
Cork 
River on castle grounds. 
Blarney Castle! 
Blarney Castle
Blarney Castle 
Frame-able
Inside Blarney Castle 
Inside the castle. 
Castle grounds. 
Garden 
Top of the castle. 
Me getting ready to kiss the Blarney Stone. 
Me failing. 
Top of castle. 
Kissing the new Blarney Stone. 
Stephanie, me and Mary at the top of the castle. 
The grounds. 
The Blarney Stone from ground level. 
Nice walk. 
Stephanie and Mary inside the caves. 
Caves 
Stephanie and Mary are scared! haha 
More caves
Light! Coming out of the caves. 
Cows! 
Cemetery in Blarney Town. 
Church in town. 
Main square of the town. 
Car show going on. 
People swimming in the River Lee in Cork. Gross! 
Cork 
Our bus station in Cork. 
Cork 
Stephanie and Mary waiting to cross the street. 
Old factory
Georgian arcitechure 
Shopping area
Sketch alley. 
Little town on our way back to Dublin. 
Cool, old building. 
Small town in the middle of Ireland. 
Somewhere in Ireland. Today Stephanie, Mary and I went to Cork City and Blarney Castle.
Cork is in county Cork, which is located in the south west of Ireland. The city was first founded by Vikings and grew into a harbor city in the 900's.
Cork has a reputation of being a rebel city. Many people in county Cork believe that Cork is the real capital of Ireland. They have also deemed themselves the food capital of Ireland.
It took us around 3 and a half hours to reach Cork by bus from Dublin. We left at 8 am and I was impressed that we all got up early and were even early at the station!
Even though we arrived early, we were one of the last people on the bus because we didn't get our tickets. We thought that we just had to show our confirmation, we didn't know we had to pick up actual tickets.
Because we were the last people on the bus, we couldn't sit together. That wasn't a real issue for me because I just planned on listening to my music and reading.
It was an issue, however, for Stephanie. She was stuck by this knacker family. In Ireland, knacker basically refers to white trash. And these people were the epitome of knackers.
First off, they were all wearing "trackies". This is what the Irish refer to sweat pants and the pants that have the three lines down the side and are made out of windbreaker material. The people who wear trackies are the gangsters of Ireland. Yes, you read that right. People who wear sweatpants are to be feared in this country. Are you for real?
Not only that, but their mother gets the worst mother of the year award. I don't even know where to begin with this. The kids were very loud on the bus. There was five kids. Two of them were the two older ones, both of them had to be around 18 years old. The other three had to be under the age of ten. They acted as if they were the only ones on the bus.
One of the younger boys was sitting in front of me and crossed the asile towards Stephanie multiple times throughout the trip. Stephanie was between him and his older brother, Thom. I don't know why the family could not sit together, because the other older brother was in the row in front of Thom. But whatever.
The little boy asked Thom if he could sit with him. Thom replied with an "eff off", but not in the polite form. What a great brother. His mom raised him right.
What really got me and my friends was that at 8 am the whole family was drinking Coke! This made me sick. I tried to justify it for them thinking that probably the younger kids didn't drink coffee and needed some sort of boost to keep them awake for the 4 hour drive.
It got worst. We had a bathroom break and the little kids bought more Coke! They bought a huge one! But that is not all they got. When we were on the bus, the little kids drank two Red Bulls like they were water! WHAT!? And then they went on drinking the Coke and even finished mom's coffee for her. I was in disbelief. I mean, I love caffieene and can handle a lot, but these kids put me to shame. Definetely worst mother of the year winner.
Mary, Stephanie and I were so thankful to get off that bus and get away from the knackers.
When we got off the bus at Cork, we simply just kept walking straight. We had no idea where to go. We eventually came to the River Lee and took some pictures. The next step was to find the city center.
I bought a book with me that had a map of Cork, but Mary doesn't like people to take out books or maps or anything that makes us look like tourists. Now, I can see her point to a certain degree. You don't want to bring attention to yourself, but at the same time we need to know where we are going! We only have 6 hours in Cork, we don't have time to wonder.
Stephanie ended up asking someone where the city center was. We followed the lady's instructions and came to some sort of shopping area. I loved Cork already because even in the main part of town, there was not a lot of people around. You had your personal space and you could breath!
We came to a main street and continued down it. There was an English market and we decided to go in. I was surprised that it was so proudly proclaimed that it was English because of the tension between Ireland and England over the years.
At the market place was all sort of fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and other food items. Mary claimed that it smelled great, I thought the smell was anogiating. It did remind me of the bazar markets I went to in Istanbul.
There was a restaurant in the market place and we decided to eat there because we were so hungry! The food was okay. I got a ham and cheese toastie.
After lunch, we went across the street because we saw some arches that might be important. We went through them and discovered a park. The park was not nice at all. There was trash everywhere; the water was green and there was a homeless person that was either dead or passed out.
I hate not having a plan, so we went to the Tourist Office to see how to get to Blarney Castle to kiss the stone. We could take a bus and the next one left in an hour, so we had some time to kill.
An hour is not that much time if you think about it. We ended up just walking alongside the river, taking pictures and going to a church. We just went into the cemetery of the church and then headed to the bus station.
We bought our tickets for Blarney and loaded unto the bus. It was only a 25 minute bus ride; not bad at all.
Then came my favorite part of any bus ride in Ireland: which one is our stop? Stephanie told us to get off at a certain stop because it "felt right". Yup, that is how you do it in Ireland.
She turned out to be right. She claims that she saw a sign, but I didn't see any sign. We eventually found a sign to the castle and followed them.
Where the castle is located, a structure has stood there since 1200 AD. Many believe that is was a wooden structure, but there is no evidence of the structure today. In 1210 AD the structure was destroyed and replace with a stone structure. This stone structure was destroyed in 1446 and was rebuilt to what you can see today.
The main reason why people go to Blarney Castle is to kiss the Blarney Stone. It is believed that if you kiss the stone, you receive the gift of eloquence. Many believe that this stone is special because Irish kings used to be crown on it.
The castle wasn't right at the entrance of the park, you had to pay and then walk a short distance to it. Mary and Stephanie had to go to the bathroom and I had to get caffiene into my system. I hadn't had any caffiene all day and I was dying. I opened my Monster I had brought with me. Everyone looked at me because they thought I had opened up a drink. Calm down everyone! Stephanie said, "it is 2 pm, you put up a good fight. You deserve your Monster". haha!
After bathroom breaks and the saving grace of Monster, we headed up to the castle. It was a beautiful day and it was such a nice walk. The grounds of the castle were amazing! One of the highlights was the cows that were just hanging out by the entrance. There was a small river that was running through the middle of the grounds. We saw little kids playing in the river and it reminded me of summer camps in elementary school; when we would go to streams and try to find little fish and other critters.
Of course our mission was to kiss the Blarney Stone. I recommended that we do that first, just in case there was a line.
The stone was at the top of the castle, so we had to basically see every room before actually getting to the stone. The castle wasn't big at all. It was of medium size and seemed to be mostly intact. To get to the top, you had to climb up these very small stairs. You then would have to get off at a room and then find where the stairs continued. It was a good way to be forced to see the whole castle. I really didn't read much of the material on the walls because there wasn't that much and we only had a limited amount of time at the castle. We saw where the people's bedrooms were. I found it interesting that girls and priests would live in close proximity to each other. Another thing I found interesting was the the kitchen was located at the top of the castle.
When we finally got to the top I was so happy! Mary was not happy. She had a huge fear of heights that she didn't tell anyone. She said that she forces herself to do these things to confront her fears. Good for her.
We let people go in front of us while we calmed Mary down. Luckily there wasn't a line for the stone. I told Mary that Stephanie and I could kiss the stone first and she could see us do it.
Stephanie went first and wasn't able to kiss the stone. You have to lean backwards and she said that she couldn't reach it.
I really wanted to kiss the stone. I laid down; lean backwards and I saw the ground far, far below me. There was no poles or nets to catch you if you slipped and I was only hanging onto some rails. There was a man "holding" onto me, but you could tell that he didn't care about your life. I was so over this. I didn't kiss the stone :(
I told Mary not to do it if she is afraid of heights. She declined. Instead, Stephanie and I chose another rock to kiss and we deemed that the Blarney Stone.
We slowly made our way down and walked around the grounds a little bit more. We found a sign for a poison garden that we wanted to check out. We didn't go to the garden, we actually ended up in front of the castle. Instead, we went to some caves. I can't believe that these caves were open to the public because someone could easily get hurt down there!
The grounds seemed to be so big! We saw fields, gardens and a small forest.
After walking around a little bit more, we left. It was only a 2 minute walk to the heart of Blarney town. We ended up going to a cemetery because Stephanie and I love cemeteries. In the cemetery, a car almost ran us over, so we decided that was a sign to leave.
What was there to do in this small town? Stephanie lead us to the tourists office and we asked. The guy recommended that we check out this shopping center. I need to not have high hopes when it comes to shopping centers. Back home, shopping centers have many stores and most of them are very good! Here in Ireland, a shopping center can refer to only two stores and usually they are really bad. Same with this. It was a large building and all the stores were connected together and it was mostly tourists things.
That only entertained us for a little bit. What now? There was a car show going on in the main square, so we found a bench and just people watched. There was a band playing and I felt so sorry for them because barely anyone was there to listen to them. But I did admire the fact that they had a passion and were carrying it out.
I then thought about what is must be like to grow up in a small town. It seemed that there was nothing really to do here. What did people do for fun? I could not live in a small town. I am definitely a city girl.
Eventually we made our way to the bus stop and got on the bus to go back to Cork. When we arrived in Cork we had a little over an hour until our bus left to go back to Dublin.
Again, an hour wasn't much time to do anything, so again we walked along the River Lee. This time there were people swimming in the river! This made us sick because we had seen a huge rat in the water and loads of trash! Yuck! Who would swim in that!?
We also ended up walking down this nice street with many shops. Like many parts of Dublin, it was a mixture of old and new. Mary said that Cork doesn't like to be compared to Dublin, but they have so many similarities!
What I find interesting about these two cities, is that both of them were started in the Viking era, but their buildings seemed to be dated from the 1700's. I guess people destroy old things to build new ones.
On this nice shopping street, we saw a trackie gang. These kids were so young and they were making out with each other and smoking! They are too young to be in a relationship and smoking! The youth of Ireland has too much time on its hands.
It was around dinner time, so we went to get something to eat for the bus ride back. Stephanie and I found sandwiches easily enough, but since Mary is a vegetarian, she had more of a difficult time. Every place she went to they had nothing. It wasn't until we were back at the bus stop that she was finally able to get something.
Luckily, the bus ride back to Dublin was uneventful. We stopped in many small towns along the way and they all looked very similar. They all had Georgian style architecture, which dates to the 1750's.
What I noticed about these small towns and other houses in the countryside was that the houses seemed to be bigger and nicer then those in Dublin. Also, their cars were bigger. In Dublin everyone has a small car and you never see a SUV. In the countryside, you see SUV like cars.
We got into Dublin around 10:30 pm. Stephanie and Mary wanted to go out and I declined. I had a long week and was very tired. They gave me a hard time about not going out, but I wanted to be rested for tomorrow so I could go exploring again.
All in all, the trip was excellent! Cork was great! I really liked the fact that I could get out of Dublin and experience a new city. Cork was a medium size city and it was just nice to take a break from the hussel and bussel of Dublin and experience a more slow pace. It was a breath of fresh air.
Blarney Castle was also a nice experience. It is always good to have a place where you can walk around and see a smaller town.
I would recommend both of these destinations to tourists. The only downside was that we didn't have enough time in either location because of the bus schedule. I would recommend that a person makes these destinations a weekend get away.
