What a difference a night’s worth of sleep can make – after only getting 7 hours in nearly three days, we all slept off the long Saturday and got rested up for our big day.
We started out day heading south east to Killaloe and checked out a farmer’s market, where we picked up some cheese, bread and I couldn’t resist stocking up from an olive merchant.
Killaloe has a beautiful old arching bridge over River Shannon. We drove over it to make our way down to Blarney, home of Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone.
We climbed up to the top of the castle, up a very narrow staircase, to reach the Blarney Stone.
To kiss the stone, you need to lay on your back, then grab two bars as the attendant lowers you faced-down onto the stone. You don’t want to look down and see the clear image of the ground below.
It has been said that those who kiss the stone are blessed with the “Gift of Gab”, or eloquence. You’ll have to let me know if you see a difference!
Later on I’ll post my pictures of us going through the castle, stopping by a few rooms on our way down. We then toured the grounds of the castle, including the Poison Garden:
It was crazy seeing some of the plans in there, some of which had cages around them to keep people out:
We built up an appetite walking the grounds and stopped for a snack at a place called The Lemon Tree. We then made our way to the Blarney Woolen Mills to do some shopping. Bethany and I didn’t end up buying anything, but I was definitely tempted…
We then drove up to Limerick and had dinner at Dolan’s Pub, and of course had our daily fix of Guinness. The GPS took us on a very narrow road home, where most of it was pretty much one lane. We made it back safely and had a nice evening playing Phase 10.
Day 2 is in the books! We are heading out the door to go start Day 3!