Blarney Castle....now that's a castle.

July 17, 2007We stopped at this old working farm for tea and scones.


Fresh made scones, fresh butter and home-made jams with tea..
The old farm grounds were very well kept, just beautiful and green.
This was the fuse box above the back door in the old farm house. There were lots of wires just hanging out of there...
Bill in front of one of the very old farm buildings that we visited.
The streaks in these pictures is pouring rain...
Our first look at Blarney Castle in the rain....a beautiful sight.



On our way up to the top, one of the many windows...

A view of the lower stories and grounds from the top of the castle.
A view from the top of the castle....just beautiful, and very HIGH! The people lined up on top are waiting to kiss the "stone of eloquence"...the Blarney Stone.
Here is Bill kissin' the Blarney stone. I kissed it too, but Bill forgot to take the picture. :-(


The inside of Blarney Castle today...... I love all of the moss and greenery growing from the stone.
Visitors from the past carved into the inside walls of Blarney Castle, if you look closely you can see the year 1898 etched into the stone wall.
Some of the gardens surrounding the castle .
Just me, sitting in the rain.

Me doing my Leprechaun dance in front of Blarney Castle.....-)



Yet, another picture of me and Blarney Castle...yeah, I know...rule number 1: never give Bill the camera!
Bill and I with our tour guide, David.
A little side street in Killarney.

We got on our tour coach, with David as our guide, and left Dublin bright and early, we drove across the island to a very old farm homestead where we had freshly made scones, fresh butter and jams made on the farm. We walked around the grounds, which were just beautifully decorated with old rock building and flowers of all sorts.

That afternoon we arrived at Blarney Castle, now THIS is a castle! As soon as we arrived it started pouring down rain, so from that moment on we looked like a couple of waifs that drifted in from the “states”…..

I love Blarney castle, it had a very eerie feel about it, and I loved every minute of it!

Everything all over Ireland is very green, just like you see in the tourist pictures; it almost hurts your eyes sometimes.

Blarney castle is massive and is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen. I think we liked it even more because the entire time we were there, it was raining and thundering, fitting weather for spending a day in a castle. There was lots of lightning as we climbed up 120 treacherous stairs to the top of the castle, where we both kissed the Blarney stone. We skipped the shopping at the Blarney Woolen mills and stayed the entire time we were in Cork at the castle. Soon, it was time to leave, we hadn’t eaten any lunch so we stopped at a small coffee shop and had a sandwich and a coke. So, I said to Bill “Bill, I’m eating a ham sandwich in the rain in the shadow of Blarney Castle, does it get any better than this?”…….yes, it does.

Soon we reached our hotel in Killarney, the Killarney Plaza Hotel. That evening we met our tour guide in the bar for drinks along with our other tour travelers. We had dinner in the hotel soon after and met some more people from our tour, two Australian ladies, Marion and Belinda. Bill had Irish stew and didn’t know he was eating mutton…ha ha!
I had the chicken (and I'm sure it was chicken...!) and enjoyed the company.