Ireland Day 1

I meant to put this post up on Friday, but Blogger was giving me troubles uploading pictures. So hopefully, there won't be as much space between posts going forward.

Anyway, today we will look at our arrival in the beautiful country of Ireland. We arrive at around 7:15 am to a very empty airport. We proceed to the bathroom and kind of get ready for the day and church because we can't get our rental car until 8:00 am. I was not in a very good mood this morning, so I stayed pretty quiet and went about my business getting ready and avoiding everyone. Once we got our rental car (and hooray that it was a seven seater so we could all be together all the time, a blessing in so many ways that we had yet to realize) and strategically fit our luggage, just barely we were off. We had three designated drivers for the job. Now you might recall that Ireland drivers drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. Melanie drove us into the city of Cork where we going to church. Once in the city the stress really took hold, but after two nail biting hours of finding our way we made it to the church just in time for Sacrament meeting.

I dozed off and on throughout. But it was alright and it was fun listening to a talk with the accents. We chatted with some of the congregation afterward and then we headed out, this time Amber at the wheel. By this time we had a system in place where there was the driver and a co-pilot in front who told the driver when they needed to turn what lane they were going to turn into. Then there was the navigator. Unfortunately, during Amber's turn the co-pilot told her wrong and we headed into oncoming traffic. Luckily, the Irish are smart enough to employ a sticker that is a big red 'L' that means this is a new driver so everyone was pretty nice and let us back up and get into the right lane. But Amber was pretty frazzled and I was chastised because I screamed, but I couldn't help it. It's instant reaction. After that, we all tried to remain calm for any driver. The next challenge were the signs. They didn't really give much warning before you needed to turn. I don't know how many times we would tell a driver they needed to turn somewhere and they would say I need more notice than that. Well, we tell you when we know.

Our first stop was Blarney. We checked out the castle admission prices and times and decided to head to get some cash first and then eat lunch.

You always knew where to find ice cream in this country due to these big cones.


We ate lunch in a small restaurant and Sarah really enjoyed her big beer glass of water.


Here we are! Blarney Castle, once on the grounds we were already in awe and of course took some time to get some punk jumps in, but none that really came out that great.



A more close-up view of the castle.



I'm inside one of the watch towers I think. It was all so amazing.


This is looking down into the center of the castle from the top. It was all open. The castle is just in ruins mostly.


Here we are in line to kiss the Blarney Stone at the top of the castle tower.


This is Sarah kissing the stone. She had the best picture of what it's like. This guy holding her was kind of funny, but he had the same lines for almost all of us. Asking us if we were scared and all that.


This is the Blarney House on the grounds of Blarney Castle.


Just a little behind the photo photo I thought was kind of cool.


This was probably my best punk jump and probably the last one you'll see me do. It's all about perspective on the jump. The photographer was always low to the ground looking up at us as we jumped. I probably barely got a foot off the ground.


Heading to see more of the grounds.




So beautiful!!

After we were done at the Castle we crammed back into the car and headed west to our next stop. I was kind of the navigator and tried to keep us on track. It was only an hour and a half drive so I was really pushing to get us to Kenmare. Once there we needed a place to stay. We happened upon a Bed and Breakfast that looked cute and I was sent into investigate. After some deliberating and lowering of the price we took it and we were so happy we did. It was the best night's stay we had. Check out the beds.



The bathrooms were really nice and modern too. Our hosts, Sam and Sheila were wonderful to talk to and made our stay so great. That night in search of some live music and Irish Dancing we went into the center of Kenmare. County Cork and County Kerry (that we were now in) had had a Galic Football match (sort of rugby soccer) called the All Ireland (equivalent to our superbowl) that day and County Kerry won. So there were lots of people in all the bars very drunk celebrating. We encountered many men very eager to chat with six American girls.

This one in particular took quite a fancy to me. He was crazy drunk and not attractive at all, but followed me around for quite a bit. I have other photos of him but I'm too embarrassed to post them on my blog. I was teased quite a bit about him.

After some of us got some food in us we headed back to the B&B since there wasn't much else to see and got a great night's sleep.