For your information about Cork, Cork is considered the rebel county of Ireland. Dublin was England's second city of the monarchy, and within the walls of what was called The Pale (from which we derive the phrase, beyond the pale, for anything that is beyond the civilized Pale is too unruly and wild to be allowed.). Cork City was the next biggest city, outside the Pale, and hence the true seat of power of the Gaelic Irish. In a related story, Michael Collins, mentioned previously, is from Co Cork, and was considered a major rebel for his work during the Easter Rising of 1916. Cork regularly threatens to succeed from the nation, and like Texas, it is forever plotting to do just that.
I woke up rather slowly after my long night with the revelers, and took a brisk shower to make it to breakfast with Dale, Lauren and Marnie, who were going to see some cathedrals and ring the bells of the Shandon church. Breakfast was good, and I added the baked beans, which are not quite like beans I am familiar with at home. They were good, but definitely not American. Marnie got her food later than the rest of us, so we had to wait in the little parlor that smelled of fresh lilies until she was ready.
The first stop was at the English Market, which is much like Pike Place in many ways. It was a structure with many vendors, and lots of food and gift. I almost bought a metal Guinness sign with the toucan that I like on it, but I decided against it (and, foreshadowing, that was a good idea to wait). Since we had just eaten, we didn't buy anything, but it was nice to look around. They had something called buttered eggs, which looked like regular eggs to me, but perhaps they have been marinated in butter. I didn't ask, but I should look it up.
We ambled on to a giant and gorgeous cathedral built in the 1860s. I took a picture of the map that describes the facade, and I think I got a few good pictures of it. We didn't go in because it cost three euro, and we were saving our money to ring the bells in the other church. We took a looping walk through a nice park on the river, before arriving at our church destination.
The organization of Cork is actually pretty cool, the River Lee splits and forms a little island, aptly called Little Island, where the city center of Cork is located. On either side of the river and many suburbs of Cork, and we crossed the northern bank of the River Lee to get to the church with the bells. We ambled through a few neighborhoods, and I can't imagine living that close to my neighbors, nor attempting to drive through the incredibly narrow streets of these suburbs. In my mind, these alleged suburbs are much too urban.
We found our way to the church of choice, which was little more than a steeple with a place to sit behind it. Inside, I found a model of the church made out of Popsicle sticks in the 50's. We paid our four euro and took industrial earmuffs to make our way upstairs into the belfry. We arrived at the top of the first set of stairs in the room in which we could pull the cords to play songs. Several song options were suggested, and we played around with them. It was hard to tell if we were really making music or not, because with the earmuffs on, we obviously couldn't hear much. We proceeded onward and upward, into narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper, flights of stone steps, until we came to the place where the inner workings of the clock were available for view. Further still, and we came to the actual belfry, which was full of actual bells and actual pigeons, and were able to pass through and stand on the top of the steeple. I have a few panoramic pictures from up there, where you can see all of Cork City spread out in every direction. It was a really remarkable place to be. Very windy, but gorgeous.
On the way back to the B&B, I got a little homesick. Dale and Marnie in particular kind of get on a roll with each other, and it becomes rather difficult to cut in. Leta says that homesick days are most often day 8, 15, and 22, and it just happened to be day 8. I moped a little, but got myself a sandwich, a coke and a smoothie, and had a little alone time, and that was just what the doctor ordered.
We met the whole group at 3:15, and took off for Blarney Castle. Spoiler alert, yes, I kissed the stone, and no I don't care, and it was awesome. Blarney Castle was incredibly cool, just because castles are incredibly cool. All the halls and stairways are so narrow, I can't imagine how someone could have ever lived there. And I don't know what practical use the keyholes in the turret walls could be, since the archers would have had to stand at points along a very narrow and steep circular stairway, where passing each other to resupply ammunition would have been near to impossible. When you first walk in, you can see that there was once a wooden floor separating the ground floor from the second, because the fireplace is about 12 feet off the ground.
Well, those windy narrow stairs are very remarkable, and I wanted to document them, and that was when tragedy struck. I dropped my camera down approximately four steps, while the lens was out and open. All the internal workings seem to be ok, because I can look at the pictures on the card, and everything displays ok. The problem is that the lens is not able to fully retract. I don't want to just push it and break something worse, so I don't know what to do about that. If I find a camera shop anywhere nearby in the near future, I'll see if they can take a look, but it might have to wait til I get back to the states. My tablet is obviously bulkier (and it would be a SIGNIFICANTLY bigger tragedy if I dropped it), but it takes fairly good pictures and is easy to upload to the blog or Facebook. Silver linings, people.
After some wandering in the gardens near Blarney Castle, and a disappointingly unopen Blarney House, we (my usual crowd) headed for the Woolen Mills. Woolen Mills is a chain of all-Irish-product gift stores, but the one near Blarney Castle in Co Cork is the largest, a veritable Wal-Mart of Irish tourism. I just about died in there.
Especially when I discovered that if I spent more than 250 euro, people, they would ship it to my house for free, and file the VAT tax exemption for me. Since the store closed at 6, and we had to be back to the bus at the same time, I had about 25 minutes to ring up at least 250 euro of things. $434 later, we are shaking with the enjoyment of a high-speed, unlimited shopping spree of fabulous goods. It will still be exciting when it arrives, probably after I return home (between their shipping and US customs), so I will list my purchases:
I got two, 10 skein packages of new Donegal yarn (Donegal being the sheep farming capital in the country) in cream, and in tweedy grey. A giant grey and cream wool afghan for the couch/my first apartment, Guinness t-shirts for Aspen and Chris (I figure the yarn is really a gift for Dad and Mom), I got Chris the pocket watch I had been eyeing at another store, an Ireland map 500 piece puzzle, one or two books of Irish music for piano, 6 Guinness pint glasses with the logo, a toucan bottle opener, a cream infinity scarf for myself, and a St. Bridget's Cross Christmas ornament to commemorate this trip. I think that's it, so the surprise will be when it arrives.
Kerry and Mayo were having the rematch of their semi-final football match, so Gabriel was in Christie's watching the match. When he was torn away to take us back on the bus, he put it on on the radio. We piled in quickly, and arrived at the hurling match just after it started. Leta got us in to an intra-county Cork match, and it was quite the nail biter! I can't quite describe it as well as that first football game, but just to give you an idea, it is much like football except with sticks and a smaller ball, and oh my god, they catch the ball out of the air with their BARE HANDS. Scoring is the same as football, and on the same pitch, so when they tied at 3-11, you know it was a good match.
(Apparently, at the end of the Kerry-Mayo match regulation time, they were also all tied up. But you can't tie more than once, and it was the semi finals, so things needed to be moved along, so they played overtime until Kerry finally scored. While we were at PwC in Dublin, Maeve, who showed us around, had said that Mayo has a curse on them. They have been a very good team for a very long time, but they keep getting to the semi finals or so, and then they lose dramatically. She says the curse started 30 years ago, the last time Mayo won, when they drove their team bus past a funeral procession and didn't stop celebrating as they passed. They haven't won an All-Ireland finals yet.)
We were on our own for dinner, and Lauren and I, after seeing that no one had any idea what they wanted or where to go, got food at a local grocer (more like a gas station, but not near a gas station), and grabbed some bits of food there. We both decided to get some Ben and Jerry's cookies and cream long before we had decided what to eat. She got a bunch of fruit, and I got a sandwich, and interestingly, they put hard boiled eggs on their ham sandwiches in this country.
After that, it was fairly quickly off to bed, because everyone else was waking up at 3 am for the Huskie game.
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