September 29, 2015

We left Dublin on Saturday and took the train over to the West Coast of Ireland to Galway.  By total coincidence, it is weekend of the Galway Oyster Festival, so it was a good weekend to visit!  We have been very lucky because the weather has been beautiful.  From what we heard, most of the time, it is cool and rainy this time of year in Ireland, but we have had great weather, so we are very thankful for that!

We got here and checked into our hotel where we hung out for the afternoon.  That evening, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant…holy cow…it was amazing!  Irish beef is undoubtedly, the best beef ever!  We each had a different cut of beef and both were amazing.  All of the food was so good that Hayden even ate his carrots and cauliflower and said, “if you could make vegetables like this, I would eat them at home too!”  I guess I need to work on my cooking skills when we get home.  🙂

The next morning, we spent in, but then got into town for the day.  We walked around the coastline, which was lovely.  The tide was out, so we walked way out into the shore and got a little wet before coming back to dry land.  We walked through into the Oyster Festival area and walked all through the town.  The city was very nice and they had lots of oysters around for the festival.

We got back to the hotel a little early and relaxed since we had to catch an early train to Cork in the morning.  We did manage to get up at about 3:00 am so that we could watch the blood moon for a few minutes.  We had a great view right outside of our hotel room window, so that worked out great!

We got up first thing Monday morning to head over to the train station to go to Cork to see the Blarney Castle.  When we got to the train station, we ended up finding a bus that was more direct then the train and they took our Eurail passes, so that worked out great!  The bus ride was long (about 4 hours), but we made it and didn’t have to worry about connections like we would have on the train.

As soon as we got into Cork, we dropped our bags at our hostel and took the bus out to Blarney Castle.  The castle was really cool.  The grounds were very well kept and there were tons of really pretty flowers.  We worked our way through the castle, including through the dungeon, the kitchen, some of the bedrooms, and the great hall.  We made it all the way up to the top where we kissed the Blarney Stone.  🙂  The view from the top of the castle was really nice.  You could see pretty much all of the grounds and even into the town.

Just outside of the castle, in the gardens, they have a “Poison Garden” which was pretty cool.  All of the plants are somehow toxic.  Adam appreciated the marijuana and Hayden liked the Mandrake (they use it in Harry Potter).

We found a playground where we climbed the wall…I was pretty impressed with myself for being able to get myself up the wall.  lol

We spent the night back in Cork before getting up first thing in the morning and leaving Cork to go back to Dublin where we fly to London!  How is it possible that we3 are heading to our last stop?!?!  At least we managed to find a leprechaun while we were here in Ireland!