Blarney and Moher!

       The plan for today was to visit the Blarney castle and grounds then drive north toward Galway and stop at the cliffs of Moher on the way.

     We were so tired last night that we pretty much got to the B&B and crashed. We set an alarm for morning and slept a lot! In the morning we got up and had our breakfast. The lovely lady we were staying at told us we could check out a little later and just take our time, so we decided to go to the Blarney Castle. 

     We started walking in what we thought was the right direction, but it turned out we were walking in the completely wrong direction! We asked a lovely guy for directions, and headed in that direction. Of all the castles we could have visited, I am glad we went to Blarney. The castle stands in the middle of a huge courtyard and gardens, which by the way, are absolutely beautiful! On the way up to the castle we saw these weird looking trees. And as we got closer, we noticed that the trees had a trunk scarf thing knitted on them. It was so weird to see a tree with clothes on, but it did look pretty neat. Being the crazy tourists that we are, we took a few pictures of the trees with skirts.

This is one of the sweet trees with a skirt on. Every tree had on something different.

The famous castle. We were so impressed how the castle is built into and ontop of the rock. So smart!

   
     The first part of the castle we visited was the dungeon. When I picture dungeons I picture jail cells. This dungeon was a long room carved out of the rock. It wasn't even tall enough for a "Kylee" to stand inside. So glad I was never a prisoner there! There were also some caves under the castle that we checked out. Dunno what they used them for, but for someone to have carved caves out of pure rock under a castle must mean they had some sort of purpose. 

     We next took a tour of the castle. The bedrooms inside were SO small! Hollywood has completely failed at showing what a real castle looks like. I always imagined huge rooms, but the rooms inside this castle, even the important rooms, don't even seem big enough to fit a queen sized bed in them and have walking space. Let alone any other furniture one might need when one lives in a castle. Paul and I decided we were very impressed with the architecture of the building. The builders had to have thought about everything as they planned and built a castle. We also loved the staircases. Two tiny spiral staircases take you all the way to the top of the 200 some foot castle. The stairs were in really steep. We just giggled at the thought of a lovely maiden in a dress running up and down those horribly steep stairs.

The ridiculously steep spiral staircase. Notice its so steep there is no rail. Just a rope that goes straight up.

A view outside the barred windows. Good thing there were bars oon the windows! The drop from the castle is terrifyingly high!

      We finally made it to the top of the castle and kissed the famous Blarney Stone. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but we did it anyway. And we didn't even wipe off our mouths when we realized how many gross people probably kissed the stone. After we finished touring the impressively large castle, visited the gardens. Now, these weren't just any gardens. These were poison gardens! The sign before entering said don't touch, smell or eat the plants! That's a cool garden if you ask me! The garden was full of all the dangerous plants known to man. Well maybe not all of them, but a lot of them! We saw wolfesbane, mandrake, and even psychotropic plants like marihuana and poppys! We had a blast reading all about the plants! 

Kissing the  Blarney Stone

Pauls turn!

A view of the castle grounds from up above

The poison garden sign

     After we left Blarney we started our drive to the cliffs of Moher. It is pronounced more for anyone that has no idea. We took the scenic route to the cliffs and looked at lots of awesome castles and ruins. Finally we made it to the cliffs. They were amazing! We walked up and down the coast line on the cliffs edge. It was just breath taking! We tried to get as close to the edge as we could while still being safe. This was one of those times we were glad our parents weren't around to tell us to stay away from the edge.

A spectacular view of the clifffs to the left

And the cliffs to the right

      From the cliffs we had a out another hours drive to Galway where we were staying for the night. We made it to our B&B hoping that we would have our luggage and sadly we didn't. We were sorely in need of some clean clothes, so we went shopping and bought a cheap shirt and pants, went and found an amazing chippy (fish and chips place), and ate our supper by the ocean and headed back home to get some sleep. 

     When we got back to the B&B our luggage had arrived! Yay! Now hopefully everything should run smoothly for the rest of our trip... Hopefully!