We began our day in Dublin with a hearty breakfast in the hotel: it included such items as tomatoes, baked beans, brie cheese, and EXCELLENT Irish sausages. Quite tasty--but I was not feeling well--I had quite a sore throat, and we had very limited time. So since we had only one day in Dublin, basically, we decided to do a city bus tour. It was pretty good, actually: we got to sit on the top of the bus; our guide's name was Gerry (pronounced "Jerry"). We saw such things as Oscar Wilde's birthplace, Trinity College, beautiful churches, and even the Facebook headquarters. "Of course they're not working today," Gerry noted. On the whole, I got the impression that Dublin was more old than new; it lacked the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, of course, but instead seemed to have a richer sense of history. After the tour, we had lunch at a mediocre burger place in the city; 7 Euro for an overdone burger with no fries. Bleah. Afterwards, I sent Kerry to get the car, which took 40 minutes, once again (the traffic is a bit insane here, especially if you're driving on the left side of the road). It took about 2 hours and 45 minutes to drive to Cork. The drive was lovely; I took lots of pictures of the scenery (and the many cows and sheep!). We weren't even sure we had the right address, but we did end up in the right place: the Imperial Hotel, which was fancier than Jury's Inn. Again, though, there were parking issues: we had to park out on the street. Fortunately, we were much closer this time, but we were told it was only free parking until Monday morning at 8:15 am. We had a difficult time finding a place to eat. The restaurant in the hotel told us we needed a reservation, and we tried two other places in town that told us there would be waits of an hour or more....and this was at 8:30 pm!!! We eventually came upon an Italian place called Milano's. The food was just okay: I had a ceasar salad and calamari, and neither was overwhelmingly wonderful.
The next day, my 48th birthday, I unfortunately felt much worse, so I just stayed in bed all day and watched TV. On the plus side, I saw a great movie with Angelia Jolie called
The Changeling. I was not surprised to learn that it had been directed by Clint Eastwood; the film reminded me a lot of his film
Gran Torino. Kerry was exceptionally nice to me, dispensing medicine and even buying me a birthday card and cake. :) I did go downstairs for dinner--more fish and chips--but I think I liked the fish and chips in Dublin better.
On the 16th I felt well enough to get out of the house, so we decided to go to Blarney Castle and Gardens after we checked out of the hotel in Cork. We were told that the wait to get into the castle was 2 hours, but it was actually more like 90 minutes to get to the castle and 30 more minutes to get to the Blarney Stone at the top. There was an older couple from Grand Rapids, Michigan behind us in line, of all things. It was a bit of a challenge to climb to the top--the stairs were narrow, often steep, and near the end of the journey to the top I bumped my head quite hard. Still the journey was slow but sure, and we made it! I got to kiss the Blarney Stone! This was practically my main reason for coming to Ireland, so I was quite happy about this. Afterwards, we explored the "Poison Garden," where cannabis, hydrangeas, and hemlock grew. Then we went to the "Rock Close," which was a rock wall with a tunnel that led to a beautiful garden with lots of greenery and waterfalls. However, after that, we decided to call it a day. We then drove on to Ennis; it took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. The desk clerk was a bit terse with us, but the room was the most spacious we've seen so far. We were both exhausted: we had skipped lunch, and we decided to take a nap after we settled in...and slept through dinner as well! The next thing we knew, it was 1 am. Crazy!
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| Me kissing Blarney Stone! |
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