Blarney Castle

This is the view at the top of Blarney Castle, standing in line to kiss the Blarney Stone. The view was great, but the castle didn't impress me that much. The main draw is climbing to the top so you can kiss the stone (which we didn't, more on that later). Unlike some of the other castles, where you can have a guided tour (Kilkenny) or wander through with a one-page map/guide sheet, this was strictly a one-way affair. You went up a series of stairs on one side of the castle, and down the stairs on the other side. If you changed your mind about climbing that far up, too bad. It hadn't been restored much, and what was there wasn't signed or labeled in any way. Everything was pretty vague.

As far as kissing the stone, we passed, thanks. To kiss the stone, you have to lay on your back on this walkway, and dangle backwards, upside down, over about a 3-storey drop. The fourth person from the left in that photo is the official photographer, who stands on a ladder and takes your picture (for a price) as you kiss the stone. There's another "official" person who holds your legs to make sure you don't take a header through the hole and break your neck. I think you're supposed to tip this guy, but I don't remember. I'm not that fond of heights, and since there's no way to know how often they clean the stone (if at all), we decided to pass on the experience. Although I do hope they send someone up occasionally to spray the thing with disinfectant of some sort.

Bonus: if you want to build your own scale model of Blarney, I found a website with plans for a paper-cutout castle. Could be fun. :)

A humorous picture from Ireland

Today's Picture:


Nice little building, right? Stone walls, window boxes, very nice. Can you guess what this is?

Anyone?

Bueller?

It's a public restroom somewhere on the coast in County Kerry. And it puts most public facilities I've seen in the US to shame, folks. This is the runner-up for Ireland's Top Toilet Award, 2002. If this is the runner-up, I wanna see the winner, really. Aside from the window boxes, the interior was amazing - hardwood ceilings and trim, a skylight (!), nice tile on the walls and floor. I had to have a picture of it (three actually - exterior, interior, and the plaque on the wall outside).

They take the tourism seriously in Ireland. We saw a lot of signs at the edge of various towns, proclaiming their placings in the Tidy Town contest and other contests. And they're not kidding around, because I don't recall seeing much in the way of trash or litter, and graffiti was practically non-existent (except in Derry/Londonderry). Things were neat and tidy, there was landscaping and flowers where appropriate. It makes the town I live in now look a bit scruffy around the edges.

Photos from Ireland - peat

Today's photo - turf, or peat, logs, stacked to dry. Yep, they still burn peat blocks in Ireland. Some of the B&Bs use it as a selling point. It's got a smoky sort of smell, a bit like bacon or something. It's hard to describe. We saw this field of stacked peat somewhere as we were driving along. Ireland is 1/6th peat bog, and has both raised bogs and blanket bogs. Peat cutting has actually increased since the 1980s, but with the increased cutting, as well as bogland being reclaimed for grazing and for tree-planting, the government has started to set aside some of the bogs as a preservation measure. One of the historical sites had a display of peat cutting tools, as well as some well-preserved artifacts that were found in the bogs. The acidic environment in the bogs slows decay, and occaionally tools, bits of wood, and evenwell-preserved "bog bodies" are found.

Today's Picture - Inishmore

While we were in Ireland, we took a boat out to Inishmor, or Inis Mor, one of the Aran Islands. It's a very rocky place, and would be tough to live on. The islands didn't have electricity until the 1970's, and most of the soil there was made the hard way, by hauling sand and seaweed up from the beaches to layer in the fields. And when I said rocky, I wasn't kidding. An aerial survey was done - Inishmor has roughly 7,000 miles of rock walls, all made of native rock, and there's plenty more where that came from. The Arans are a Gaeltacht, one of the regions where Gaelic is still the main language.

We took a minivan tour of the island, given by an islander named Mairtain. (Tourism is a big employer on the island, I guess - lots of independent jaunting car and minivan tours.) We went to the Seven Churches first, because it was rainy, and then to Dun Aengus (or Aonghasa) after the weather cleared a bit. Dun Aengus was amazing. It's a partial ring fort on the edge of a sea cliff (300 feet down to the ocean), and you have to walk up a heck of a hill to get there. The view is unbelievable in all directions, and you can walk right up to the edge of the cliff to look at the sea. I gather that bits of the fort occasionally fall into the ocean, too. Don't know if they've lost any tourists over the edge, but it's pretty windy at the top and there aren't any barricades.

When we were there, there were less than 1,000 people living on the island. The Arans were one of the few places where the population went up during the Potato Famine - the potato blight didn't make it out to the islands, and the population went from 3,000 to 5,000 during that time. The main industries are fishing and tourism, although AT&T has a factory there that employs 35 people to put some sort of chip together. The island is kind of closed off - they don't allow outsiders to build vacation homes there. One of the other Arans did allow outside homes - land prices went through the roof, and either 400 or 4,000 vacation homes were built in one year.

By the way, if you go to Inis Mor, avoid the public restroom facilities at the pier in Kilronan, unless they've been repaired since we were there. The hand dryer only worked about every fourth try, and the plumbing was equally temperamental.

Ireland Pictures for the weekend

Three days of Ireland pics in one post.

First, Saturday:



This is the Wicklow Mountains, south-southeast of Dublin. It's a different sort of area, not the lush green that most of Ireland was. Different vegetation, I guess. The hills are very pretty, although they aren't what I'd call "mountains." They are probably the tallest things in Ireland, though, so I guess they qualify by default. This is also where the author Anne McCaffrey lives, although I didn't know that when we were there. The little town of Avoca is in this area as well. It's mostly known because of the BBC series Ballykissangel, which is shown on PBS in some areas. We hadn't discovered the series when we were there, though, or I would have made a point to at least drive through the town.


Sunday's Picture:


A round tower at Glendalough, another ancient religious site. This site was built in the 6th century and destroyed by English troops in 1398. This tower is more intact that the one at Monasterboice, and you can see the cone-shaped roof that makes it look like a pencil. This was a very pretty place, and very popular. We skipped the visitors' center, since we arrived right after a busload of tourists. There are also some other religious buildings at this site, including St. Kevin's Church.


Today's picture:


One of the five bastions of Charles Fort - County Cork, on the south coast of Ireland. This was one of the neatest places that we went. Charles Fort is an old star-shaped fort, built in the 17th century, and one of the largest military forts in Ireland. It's a very neat place, and the guide doing our tour was very interesting. We were there for almost two hours, and could have stayed longer if they weren't closing fo rth enight. When we were there, there was some debate on how to restore the fort - should it be restored back to the original 17th century site, or as it was later on?

Charles Fort is near the town of Kinsale, which is apparently famous for its food. I wasn't impressed with our eating experiences there, but then I'm not a foodie. The food leans toward the gourmet end, both in food and in price. It's a very small town with very narrow streets, so driving was a pain. Also, no parking in town. We finally found a free parking lot on a hill above the town, and would walk down to eat or whatever. Someone on that hillside had a lawn that must have been a real trick to mow, as it was on about a 45-degree slope.

Ireland - Newgrange

Newgrange, our first day in Ireland. Newgrange is a Megalithic passage-tomb, built sometime around 3200 BC or so (according to the best carbon-dating estimates). Older than the pyramids at Giza. The white wall is made of stones, and there's a pattern done with darker stones in the white. The entrance is off to the right, and at the winter solstice, the sun shines directly in at sunrise. People are allowed in at the solstice, but there's a lottery to see who gets to go. The mound covers about an acre, and there are 97 kerbstones around the base (the grey line below the white). There are two other mounds nearby, Knowth and Dowth. We only had time to tour Newgrange.

There are quite a few of these mounds in Ireland. There were more, but apparently some of them were dismantled and the rocks were used to pave roads or build walls. Kind of a shame.

The cafeteria at Newgrange was also our introduction to Irish-cafeteria food. The main thing I remember is little sandwiches on standard white bread, cut in half and packed in little triangular plastic boxes, for the low price of 7 Euros (about $10 US). Butter on all the bread, and a strange fascination with mayo (which I can not stand, so that was a little hurdle there). Rick Steves raved about the place in his book, but I was not impressed. Maybe it was the low blood sugar, or maybe I just believed the Frommer's book that claimed you could tour Ireland on $60 a day.

Wednesday's Ireland Photo - Staigue Fort

This is the wall at Staigue Fort, an old stone ring-fort near Sneem. These walls are about three-layers of stone thick at the widest - you can see areas of single, double, and triple here - and they're about 15 feet high at the tallest point. All done with no mortar, and still standing after a few hundred years. There's no good date for its construction, some estimates say first century B.C., others say 400 A.D. To get to Staigue Fort, we had to drive down a very narrow path, then put our entrance fee in a box (honor system) and hike across a sheep pasture. In the rain. We were there alone, since we went in the off-season (hence all the rain).

Tuesday's Picture - Irish River,

This is the Sneem River (or River Sneem) in Sneem, County Kerry. I believe this is the part of the river that ran through the little town of Sneem. Another bit of the river ran right past the B&B we were staying in, called Derry East Farmhouse. The owners are a nice couple who raise suckling calves as well as running a B&B. We had one of the best meals in Sneem, at a little restaurant called O'Sullivan's Sacre Couer. Actually we ate there twice, it was so good. And I'm not just biased because I was sitting next to a heater there - it was one of the few times I was really warm in Ireland. (Did I mention that I under-packed for the weather?) The meal for both of us only cost €35, which was very affordable. I had salmon, which was about 16 ounces, and DH had fried garlic chicken (about 1/4 of a bird), plus the usual boiled potatoes, cheesy cauliflower, and the first non-mushy carrots we ate the whole trip.

Monday's Picture of Ireland:


To match today's weather, kind of. It's gloomy here today. This picture was taken in Killarney, I believe near a spot called Ladies' View (where Queen Victoria and her ladies-in-waiting stopped to take in the view on a visit in 1861). That yellow patch? The only sun we saw that day. The rest of the time was rainy and misty, and then here's this one little patch of sunlight up on a hillside. Not far from this view was Muckross House, where Queen Victoria stayed on her visit. If our tour guide was right, the family prepared for six years for her visit, including building a fire escape on to her room. The Queen even brought her own fire-fighting engines with her. (Apparently there was a childhood accident and she ended up with a lifelong fear of fire.) But after six years of preparation, her visit lasted two days, folks. Oh my.

Sunday's Picture from Ireland

Sunday's picture:


This is a little waterfall at the Irish National Stud. "Little" in the sense that it doesn't fall a few hundred feet, but it wasn't a little waterfall in a bucket for your lawn either. Don't recall if it was in St. Fiachra's Garden, or the Japanese Garden, but it was very pretty.

Saturday's Ireland picture

One of the first places we went in Ireland was the Irish National Stud at Tully, County Kildare, since I'm a horse nut. This is one of their stallions in his paddock. Unfortunately, I don't remember which one this is. If it's one of the horses on their website right now, he could be Elusive City or Touch of the Blues, but I'm not sure. I took a lot of pictures there, and while the stalls and paddocks did have name plates, there were a few that didn't match up. The day we were there, they had two of their retired geldings, Vintage Crop and Danoli, sharing a stall - it was farrier day, and these two guys were buddies so they were hanging out in the same stall until it was their turn for shoes.

Aside from the horses, the estate at Tully (almost 1,000 acres!) has St. Fiachra's Garden, the Japanese Gardens, and the Horse Museum. The museum was apparently refurbished last year, but it's got a timeline of horses in Ireland and a lot of racing memorabilia, including the skeleton of a famous racehorse named Arkle. The tour of the Stud takes about 45 minutes, and you get to walk through the barns and the stallion paddocks, as well as the miniature horses that are bred there. The stalls have skylights in them; apparently the fellow who built the place before donating it to the State was a believer in astrology, and had readings done for the foals to decide which he kept and which he sold.

Ireland - the southwest coast

Today's picture from Ireland:



This is a view of the coast line from the top of Hook Head Lighthouse, on the southern coast of Ireland. This was an interesting place. The Hook Head lighthouse is very old - established in 1172, it was originally a coal-powered lighthouse run by monks. The "light" in the early days was a bonfire, basically. As I recall, for a while it was lit by a coal fire; the coal was brought over from Wales by boat, then the monks carried it up the lighthouse stairs in bags. The tour was great, we got to go out on the catwalk to look around. I took a lot of pictures, and need to see if I can make a panorama shot out of them. They were testing the foghorn while we were there, and before every foghorn blast they would set off a siren and strobe light to warn us about the foghorn. The warning siren was probably louder than the foghorn itself, so it was kind of funny.

The Cliffs of Moher

Today's picture from Ireland:


The Cliffs of Moher, also known as "that really foggy place" when we were there. :) When the weather is clear, the place is amazing. I've got postcards to prove it, because when we were there, the cliffs were hidden in either a fog bank or a very low-flying cloud. From the road, you could barely see the visitors' center, and from the VC you sometimes couldn't see the cliffs. We still had to pay to enter, although I propose that on days when you can't see ten feet in front of you, there should be a discount. :)

There's a concrete path along the cliffs (with a fence), and at times you couldn't see past the fence. Occasionally, we'd get a break in the mist and be able to see down to the ocean, but not often. We ended up in the visitors' center with a busload of other tourists, so the place was too packed to really move. Which is why I saw a Celtic-knot necklace, but didn't buy it - I could get to the necklace, but actually paying for it probably would have taken a while. Ah well.

To see what the Cliffs look like in good weather, the official site has a page of E-postcards you can send. It's a lovely place when you can see it. That's one of the pitfalls of traveling in the off season sometimes.

A Busy Day

(We'll call this Wednesday's post, even though it's after midnight.)

First, today's picture from Ireland.


This is DH with one of the horses we rode in Ireland. We spent an eye-boggling amount to go ride on the beach for about an hour, near Galway. We were lucky to find anywhere to ride at all, since we were there during the off season. Apparently, most of the touristy riding places close up for the winter and take the horses somewhere else. So it was just the two of us and the girl in charge of the place, and we were probably the only customers all day. It was the first time I ever rode English, and I was complimented on my posting. I have some doubts as to the sincerity of the compliment, since being nice to the tourists is probably good for business, and we were paying quite a bit to go riding on a drizzly day with no other tourists in sight. On the other hand, I'll take any compliment I get. Ignore the skeptical side of the brain. :)

In other news: We didn't make it to the Little Old Lady Lunch today, so no gossip about the police action we saw on Monday. Nothing in the paper either, so I guess the six police cars were just here because nothing else was going on around town. Instead, my parents came up to see El Burrito (and me), and to visit my mom's sister in the hospital. Breast cancer, a lymph node-ectomy and what I guess you'd call a pro-active double mastectomy. This would be the second maternal aunt with a problem. Joy joy, one more thing to worry about. So, El Burrito got to see his great-grandparents for maybe the fifth time in his life (even though they only live 30 minutes from his grandparents), met two of my cousins, and made googley eyes at a teenaged girl in the waiting room. And I got even more proof of the general crankiness and dysfunction in my extended family.

After which, we came home, my parents went home, and El Burrito had a nap while I took advantage of Ebay's 20-cent listing sale. I just finished listing the last Breyer. With any luck, my work will pay off, and some of this stuff will find a new home.

And, while we ate dinner, we watched PBS - tonight was our first chance to see the episode of Great Performances with Loreena McKennitt's concert from the Alhambra in Spain. It was an awesome, very high-quality concert, and the sound was amazing. They were offering DVDs of the concert with a pledge of $190, but that's a bit rich for my blood. Hopefully it'll be available through more affordable sources later. I can't wait until we get to see her live in Nashville next month. And I sincerely hope that she doesn't wait another nine years before her next album.

Ireland Picture for Today

Before things get busier, here's today's picture.


Kylemore Abbey, in the Connemara region of Ireland (on the west coast). This isn't a postcard; I took this myself. But, except for the cars in the parking lot, it looks a lot like the postcards of the Abbey. I'll assume that speaks well for my photography skills. :) This was taken on one of the days when it rained most of the day, a good steady drenching downpour. And me without a raincoat to speak of. The rain kept us from going on their garden tour; they have a six-acre walled Victorian garden, which I hear is pretty amazing.

The Abbey was originally a family home, but the man who built it gave it to the Benedictine nuns after his wife died. Right now it's an Abbey and a international girls' boarding school. The interior has some amazing woodwork. The stair banister had spiraled vertical bars, which I think were all hand-carved, and there were chairs with matching legs. We didn't get to tour the garden, but we did walk up to the neo-Gothic church on the grounds. The Abbey has a photo gallery on their website, if you want to see more pictures.