Day 4 was an extremely long day, and I mean around 24 hours for us. After our night in a little village outside Killarney, we set off towards Blarney to visit the Blarney Castle... and of course therein kiss the Blarney stone!
The morning started off rainy, but I have discovered that Irish weather is even stranger than Kentucky weather in that one minute it's pouring the rain and the next we are in sunshine but then we turn a corner to find snow. But when we got to Blarney it wasn't at cold as it had been yesterday at the Cliffs, but the sky was overcast and it loomed rain for the future. We started our hike through the Castle estate and when we got to the Castle we bypassed the dungeons and kennels and went straight for the stone. However, to kiss the Blarney Stone, you first have to get to the Blarney Stone, which means climbing allllll the way up to the top of the Castle through one small tower by way of a teeny tiny spiral staircase. Ropes had been attached in the walls to serve as handrails if that tells you anything... at points you literally had to pull yourself up and climb to the next step. Now, these steps were spiral so they were narrow on one side and even more narrow on the other. That being said, I've never been so glad to have a slender female foot in my life.... I don't see how men with large feet make it! I myself was having to turn my foot sideways to get most of my foot on the steps! But after getting to the top, I realized something.... going into this, I had a false assumption of what the Blarney stone would look like. I thought it would be a stone that you walked up to and kissed.... boy was I ever wrong! Indeed, the Blarney stone is located at the bottom of the wall of the tower of the Castle..... this means that you had to lay back over another wall, through a gap, hold on to two bars with your arms, and also let some Irish guy hang on to you so that you could kiss the Stone without falling through the crack!!! Of course I've attached a picture! But yes friends, I have indeed laid myself through a castle wall and kissed the Blarney stone!
After leaving Blarney, we headed on to Dublin where our tour would officially end. But since we had return from London in our package as well, we had to kill a couple of hours in Dublin before our bus would pick us up for our journey back across the Irish Sea and Wales. So we piddled up and down Talbot street, stopping at Carroll's Irish Gifts and doing a bit of shopping. We took our time and killed enough time that we made it back to Paddy's Palace around 6:30, with our bus supposedly leaving around 7, which turned into 7:30. The 17 of us loaded onto a rather new coach and headed to the port to get on another ferry. We pulled out to sea around 9 and off we went for the three hour ferry ride. We were all starved and got some tasty food, chicken tikka massala for myself (one of my favorite indian dishes) and others had steak and kidney pies and the like. But soon after eating, the old seasickness set in again.... But this time I just tried to sleep it off. By 11:40 pm, and after a small nap, I was more than ready to get the heck off the ferry before my head exploded or I had to use a convenience bag. I stepped out on the port side of the ferry and to my delight, Land Ho!!!!! Finally, we started slowing down, and we all headed back to the bus. I was very thankful to get back on dry ground and in a moving vehicle that I could tolerate. Being now that it was 12:30 in the morning, we started our 6 hour drive back to London through Wales. Don't have much to say about this part except it's amazing how many positions you can put yourself in order to get somewhat comfortable on a bus so that you can sleep. We stopped around 3:30 at a rest stop and I got a muffin but I really just wanted to go back to sleep. Back on the bus at 4, I managed to doze in and out until I realized the sun was coming up, and it was 6 am, and we were back in Kilburn, the station we had left from. I was thankful that the Jubilee line was in good service on Easter Monday and we all sleepily jumped on the tube with all our bags and headed home. After a line change at green park to the Northern, we rode to Euston and jumped out. Ah, home, we were nearly there. Just a couple minutes walk and we saw it, Endsleigh Court! home sweet home! I was delighted to find that my long lost packages had also arrived so I took them up with me as we came in the door at 7 am. So yes, this day was completely 24 hours and even the porter asked if we had been driving all night.... must've looked a bit rough.
I sleepily stumbled up to Flat 210, opened my packages, had a fudge round (yum and thank you parents) and put myself to bed! And that, in a nutshell, was my days spent in Ireland! Hope you all enjoyed!!!
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