Trip to Ireland -Cork and Blarney, Part I

Sorry it’s taken so long to get up some pictures and some new content. I found it a little overwhelming trying to catch up on Texas Tech and DTN while I was away. Despite my other duties we’ll get into the first leg of the trip.  Don’t forget that you can see all of the photos from the trip on Puppy Dog Blue’s Flickr page.  I’ve organized all of the photos into sets, so click on sets to see the photos organized.

Sweet Sweet and I left on Friday (5/17) and flew to New Jersey where we were to catch a flight to Dublin. When we scheduled the flight we decided to save a little money (I know, surprise, surprise) and have a short little layover in Newark. And when I say short I mean 6 hours. To set things up, we also left Dallas at 7:00 a.m., which meant that we had to leave Kaufman at 4:00 a.m. Thankfully, Randy and Ann drove us to DFW.

I decided not to shave for the entire trip.  That’s a days worth of not shavng. Not too bad.

Sweet Sweet and myself.

The Newark airport, in all it’s glory.

High above the clouds.

Our original destination was Dublin, but as soon as we arrived in Dublin we were to catch a train to Cork. Normally, this wouldn’t be so bad, but we had taken a 4 hour flight from DFW to Newark, a 6 hour layover, a 6 hour flight from Newark to Dublin and now a 3 hour train ride to Cork. Sweet Sweet was a champ through the whole process and I thank her for that.

Cork is an industrial town, but it’s coming along. We knew that the Blarney Castle was nearby and that was our real point of destination. It rained every day while we were in Ireland except for one day which was Blarney. On this blog post we’ll cover Cork and Blarney.

Here’s the main shopping street in Cork.

This is looking over the bridge on the main river going through town.

My Sweet Sweet.

Across the street from the river.

All of these photos were taken before we were to take our bus to Blarney. The small town of Blarney is one of those quaint little towns that you see on postcards. Of course there is also Blarney Castle which has in it the Blarney Stone, which legend has it if you kiss it they you will receive the “gift of gab”. As most of you know, I already possess that gift so it’s simply been amplified.

Here’s a small river running through the grounds of the Blarney Castle.

Blarney Castle.

Me.

The trip up to the top of the tower was a small and narrow stairway so if you are at all claustrophobic then this is not your something that you should do.

This is a view of the grounds on the first level of the castle.

This is overlooking a field from the top of the tower that had just been harvested for hay.

Spectacular view.

These are the tourets and as you can see by the line, this is a popular exhibit.

Look at me try to be artistic.

Local legend has it that the staff urinates on the stone, but considering that it had been raining non-stop for quite some time before this day, we weren’t too worried about it. Besides, it’s just rumor and you only live once. Carpe Diem.

Here’s Sweet Sweet.

Myself.

Sweet Sweet and me.

Although a little gross, this was the bathroom in the castle and this was, well, the toilet.  Some of you will find this interesting, some of you will find this gross.  I am trying to appear to the former.

This is part of the outer-wall of Blarney Castle.

Me, smirking for no apparent reason.

We finished the day by watching two local soccer teams play their Sunday match.  It was a good way to end the day.

All in all a great first day of seeing the sights.  We really enjoyed ourselves.  After seeing the sights in Dublin we headed back to Cork.  I was only able to watch one athletic/sporting event the entire trip and it happened to be the semi-final hurling match between Cork and Waterford.  Sweet Sweet and I ducked into a pub (which happened to be Miranda’s first pub) and I ordered her a Carlsburg and myself a Murphy’s.  Hurling is a cross between baseball, Australian Rules Football and rugby.  Brutal as hell and the athletes are incredibly skilled.  I won’t get into scoring or how the game is played, but let it be known that the entire town was into the game.  Everyone was wearing their Cork jersey.  As it turned out, Cork lost to Waterford and as you can imagine the mood in the pub was less than jovial.  A great way to end the day.