We were back to an early morning
schedule this morning but not the earliest that we have been. Tomorrow, we will
be back to the earliest schedule. 0 dark thirty comes awfully early. But we are
nearly finished our trip. Do I want to go home? I think so. Some mornings it
has been hard to get up so early. But I have enjoyed the trip and will have
good memories from it.
In Killarney, they have a road
rally about three times a year. The first one for this year is this weekend.
Our driver was able to get us out of Killarney before the rally started and we
had a long drive ahead of us. Members of the group fell asleep because we have
been very busy since we arrived in Ireland. I was in bed by 9:30 pm for the last
couple of nights and was asleep by 10:30 last night.
Our first stop was at Blarney where
we could go up into the castle to kiss the Blarney Stone. We didn’t have to do
this, and you could go up to the top of the castle just to take pictures if you
wanted to. Some just wanted to wander the grounds for while. There was a number
of us that did go up to the top of the castle including myself. I even kissed
the Stone! Surprise! Surprise! My brother also did. I do have to say that on
the way up, I did have to stop at one point and take a rest. I was going to go
back down but when I found out that it was only one more flight of stairs, I
decided that I might just as well complete what I set out to do. It was much
easier going down than going up.
Before going back to the bus, I happened
to see the sign for the “Poison Garden” and went to see what it was all about.
It was much bigger than I had anticipated, but I’m pretty sure that I saw all
of it. I then started to wander towards the path, taking pictures along the
way. I didn’t push myself and got all of the pictures that I wanted.
While we were at Blarney Castle,
our driver had taken the rest of the group over to Blarney Woollen Mills. They are
within walking distance of the castle and we were to walk over to rejoin the
group. When I arrived there, the bus was locked up, so I went into the
restaurant for a smoothie. It was enjoyable. We had a total of approximately
two hours in Blarney.
At our next stop, we visited the
replica of a sailing vessel that was built in 1845 and transported emigrants
from Ireland to North America. The original vessel was built in Quebec City. We
had an opportunity to see what kind of conditions that these emigrants had to
endure to leave Ireland during the potato famine. They had a couple of people
act as emigrants, one as a steerage passenger and the other as a paying
passenger. It was quite interesting.
After this, we travelled to our
hotel and did a walking tour around the old part of the city. We learned
interesting things about the history of the city and saw some interesting
sites.
Many of you may question why I
haven’t given names of some of the places that we have been over the last couple
of weeks. I gave some of the names after we had left the place that we visited
only as a precaution. I will be expanding on these posts and will be posting
pictures after we return to our homes. I hope that you will continue to read these
posts as I do my wandering, both in reality and in imagination.
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