County Cork

Or, as Rory called it, the Rebel County.

Today we headed southeast, to Cork County for a day filled with adventures.  Before even getting started, I want to acknowledge Jenn as the day's MVP, for navigating the considerably more constricted urban streets than those found in Adare, which is especially impressive given the wrong-side-of-the-road driving.  Many, many snaps/kudos/other good things to Jenn for that.

First on our list was Blarney Castle.  My expectations were minimal, given the highly tourist-centric nature of kissing the Blarney Stone.  That said, my expectations were vastly exceeded.*

*Not by actually kissing the stone.  That part was ~60 of the most awkward seconds ever (see photographic evidence below).

So that's a thing that happened.  No, my expectations were exceeded by the grounds and the layout of the castle estate.  It was very pretty, and sat at the convergence of two rivers.  We were able to see the castle garden, the poison garden, a pretty-but-weirdly-tiki-themed waterfall/fern garden, and a number of pagan artifacts (which may have actually been representations of pagan artifacts - it's hard to know for sure).  Anyway, we ended up staying for way longer than I thought that we would (at least two and a half hours).  The whole experienced was helped by the fact that it was partially-mostly sunny, and pretty pleasant the whole time we were there. 

After finishing up at Blarney, we headed into Cork City, which is where Jenn demonstrated her extreme driving prowess, in search of the County Gaol (Jail).  We finally found it, but it's pretty clear that maybe spending 10 Euro / day on a GPS wouldn't have been the worst of all ideas (though, I wasn't particularly inclined to buy into any more of their nickel/diming/fees/whatnot, by the time we were done with Dooley's).

As I've come to expect from museums/castles/etc. on this trip, the Gaol was really well set up.  The self-guided tour was thoughtfully done, and the exhibits were well-constructed and fairly interactive.  The inside of the Gaol was also pretty gorgeous (you know, minus the cells).  Would probably be an excellent event space, if that weren't super weird.

Our final stop of the day was to go to the Jameson experience.  Unfortunately, we arrived after the last tour opportunity, but we (Carly and Jenn) were still able to sample some whiskeys and go through the Jameson store.

Since Jenn and Carly sampled whiskeys, I had my first Irish driving experience.  In the rain.  In the dark.  On the wrong side of the road.  For real.  Guys, there are sooooo many rotaries here.  And they all go the wrong freaking way.  Do you know how stupid that is?  I need someone to start writing letters about this.  Dislike.  

... But clearly we survived, and I was mostly navigating rural roads, which are way, way easier than the ones that Jenn navigated in Cork.

Tomorrow, we're staying in County Limerick for our adventures.  Until then!