On Wednesday we headed straight to Blarney Castle. Anita and Darla wanted to kiss the Blarney Stone – having been up there before I knew there was no way in heck I’d be doing a backbend off the top of a castle for a key photo op.
Blarney is beautiful. The Castle seems huge – partially because it is huge but also because the walls on the highest side lean in a bit, which apparently gives the impression of being even taller than it is.
We started with the dungeon entrance in the back. The dungeon was super creepy! I went into about the first 3-4 chambers – to use a term loosely. To get into the next chamber I would have had to wiggle like a snake into the next section. It was more like a wormhole entrance into the building. I had flashes of how creepy it must have been to be locked in there as I crawled around.
Next we shot up to the top of the castle. The stairs are windy, slippery, rickety (if you can call stone steps rickety) and narrow and lead up to a roofless top. The rooms along the way are dismay, if you picture actually living in one. They’re kind of cool if you know you’ll never be locked in and stuck to let your hair grow long to escape.
The girls did a great job kissing the Blarney stone. Then we climbed down. We walked around the estate, which was really nice and saw the Blarney House, which is the much more modern version of the castle.
Then we headed to Castle Number Two – the Rock of Cashel, another very cool castle! (Normally one castle a day would be enough for me but it was genuinely fun to see these two.) From a distance, it is like a huge castle in the sky.
There was a brief video on castles, which we watched and again I actually liked. It was interesting to learn that the statues that are kind of bleak looking (blank faces, very limited detail) were created during and soon after the Black Plague. So the bleakness mirrored the mood of the times.
After Cashel we headed back home. That turned out to me a good idea as I woke up super super sick (and sad) on Thursday.
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