Base City: Dublin, Ireland

Accommodations: Abbey Court Hostel

Tour Agency: Irish Day Tours

June 21: Rock of Cashel, Cork, and Blarney Castle, Ireland

The day started with another early morning trek to the Molly Malone statue to meet our tour guide and the rest of the crew. Irish Day Tours seems to be a bit smaller of a company than Paddywagon, so it was fairly simple to locate our white tour bus with the blue swirl on the side. 

Immediately, this tour guide struck me as different than the last one. He was joyful, singing Irish ditties to himself as he drove, and almost as soon as we set out from Dublin, he taught us the Molly Malone song. Give it a listen and imagine it's 7 a.m. after a week and a half of traveling every day and your tour guide is asking everyone on the bus to harmonize while he gives friendly honks to other cars on the motorway.

Nevertheless, after a short nap and some acclimatizing, his charisma became infectious and everyone had a grin on their faces as he shot trivia questions at us and regaled us with tales of ancient Ireland. 

Our first stop was the Rock of Cashel. This is the legendary site of the conversion of the King of Munster by St. Patrick when Ireland was christianized in the 5th century. The structures are built on an ancient rock believed to previously be a pagan worship site, and they boast Celtic art and Romanesque wall paintings. Cormac's chapel, the lighter colored building, is made of sandstone and contains one of the best preserved Irish frescoes of this period. 

After a jaunt around the grounds, we packed back into the bus to continue on to Cork, where we were stopping for lunch. The tour guide/driver called ahead to check that the pub where they normally recommend eating would be able to accommodate such a large crowd all at once, but learned that the pipes had burst there and they were closed that day. This caused a bit of scrambling, but our driver had a good backup where we ended up having some traditional Irish pub food. We ended up sitting with two American girls (can't get away from them, even 4,000 miles away from home), and one of them was from Minnesota, coincidentally (her first reaction when I said I was moving there was, "But why?" which didn't particularly inspire confidence, but oh well). 

Unfortunately, we wasted most of our time in Cork talking and waiting for the check, so we only had a minute to pop into the English Market across the street before we took a walk along the river back to our bus.

Next, we arrived at Blarney Castle. This is a medieval fortress where tourists come to kiss the Blarney Stone: you hang upside down over a ledge, kiss the stone, and are supposedly given the "gift of the gab," or eloquence.

One of the downsides to taking a bus tour is that everything is timed. When crowds are large, sometimes you miss out on things. Kissing the Blarney Stone was one of those things. When we got there, the line took an hour and a half to get through, which would have taken up all but 30 minutes of our time there—which I didn't want as someone who doesn't super buy into touristy landmarks, and Mary didn't want as someone who had already kissed the stone. 

Instead, we walked the grounds, and I can tell you quite assuredly: we made the right decision. There was a picturesque Fairy Glade, where passersby left coins as an offering to the mischievous fairies. The Witch's Kitchen was an eerie spot where it is said the Witch of Blarney escapes and lights a fire every night to keep warm. We climbed a mammoth-sized tree, and even took a pass through the poison garden, filled with everything from cage-enclosed marijuana to deadly nightshade.

We also traversed the circle of the Seven Sisters, nine huge stone monoliths, two of which were laying on the ground. Legend tells of a famous King of Munster who once ruled the lands. He had seven daughters and two sons. One fateful day the king's army rode out to battle. Although victorious, it came at a great cost, as both sons were killed in the fighting. The army marched back to the castle, on route passing the ancient druid's stone circle that had stood for millennia. The king dispatched a contingent of men to the sacred site and in his grief he instructed them to push over two of the nine standing stones. This would forever commemorate his two fallen sons.

My favorite whimsical adventure was the Wishing Steps. These were tucked beside a waterfall, and in order for your wish to come true, you had to walk up the stairs, then down them backwards with your eyes closed, all the while keeping no thought in your mind aside from your wish. (For any fact-checkers out there, the steps in the picture below are not the Wishing Steps: I was too caught up in the magic to take a picture of them while I was there.)

After walking the grounds, we came back to the castle to look at the tower and walk along the battlements. At the end of our time, we went to the dungeons, which was actually a really unique experience. It was so dark that we had to turn on our phone flashlights, and there were puddles of water pooling on the cool ground. Deep underneath the castle above, we found a room filled with white painted names from years of travelers. 

Our way back to Dublin was filled with Joseph, our tour guide/driver, telling us how he commuted to Belfast every week to take care of his sick mother and how he had just recently bought his own bus to give tours of northern Ireland. He also kind of gave his conversion story, and I really appreciated his life philosophy, which he incorporated throughout the entire day: "Just love other people." If you are ever in Ireland, I highly recommend using Joseph with Irish Day Tours or his own company!

Next, we travel to Malahide to see a castle that has been in one family for over 900 years and to Howth to get lost while hiking! 

If you've missed any part of my European travels in 2017, go here to catch up!