Cork

Greetings!! I'm sort of going to skip over the last week, because nothing really all that important happened. Well, we went to Tara, but my camera was dead, so I don't have any good pics from that yet (I'll steal some later) for this post, I'm going to write about my trip to Cork! We had a free weekend this weekend, so a bunch of us hopped on a 4 hour bus ride to the wonderful city of Cork! I stayed in a hostel with about 6 other people, and it was so small!

This was our room at the hostel we stayed in. It was tiny.

We mostly just walked around town, getting a feel for the city. we ate lunch/dinner at this bar called The Old Oak, which was really good (and really cheap). We ended up back there later that night for drinks. basically our first day was not all that interesting. The next day however...

We also happened to see Bellatrix Lestrange walking down the street.

was one of my favorite days in Ireland so far. We woke up around 9 in the hostel, and met up with Cara, Karen, Caitlin and Jill at a place called Wholey Grain for breakfast. From there we went to a tourist place on Grande Parade Street and got info on how to go see the Blarney Stone. We hopped on a Bus Eirrann bus and took the 15 minute ride to Blarney castle. It was beautiful!! Seriously, it was amazing. The climb up to the top of the castle where the stone is was extremely treacherous, the stairs were very narrow and steep. Once we got to the top, we all kissed it and will hopefully have some good luck for the rest of the trip.

The scary and dangerous stairs. the only thing to hold onto was that rope in the middle.

View from the top

Sarah kissing the stone

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

Me with a mandrake (Mandragora) plant (in my Harry Potter shirt!!!)

 After that we took the bus back to Cork and headed to a hurling match. Hurling is ridiculous!! I don’t know all of the rules, but it seems like it’s a lot like field hockey, but in the air instead of on the ground. Guys run around with these hurling paddles, I think they’re called, and basically hit this ball that is kind of like a baseball down this field. To score, there is two options: you can either hit it between these two goal posts (picture a field goal) and that gets you one point, or you can hit it into a soccer net which is directly beneath the goal posts and that gets you 3 points. Right now, that’s all I know about the game, other than that I wish it was more popular in America.

By the end of the match, it was almost 5:00, and Kelia, Sarah and I were going to catch our bus at 7, so we headed back to our hostel to pick up our stuff. We were extremely tired and hungry, (All I had eaten today was a croissant at breakfast) so we stopped at a subway to get sandwiches to eat on the bus. The bus took another 4 hours to get home, and now I’m really tired, so I’m headed to bed. Night all!