Cashel and Blarney

 Today was a bit of a castle day.  First we visited the Rock of Cashel.  This castle, built on a large limestone outcropping (the rock), was the home of Irish kings for centuries.  They controlled the whole southeast from Limerick, all through the south and all the surrounding area.



We did a tour of the place which took about 45 minutes.  He explained the various buildings in the castle and some of the stories from the past.  Quite interesting.  In fact, St. Patrick was here as the castle was given to the archbishop of the time between warring kings.  This is St. Patrick’s well which is blocked off so no one can touch it.

This is the cathedral inside…and the tower outside.

And a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside.


And another tourist kindly took our photo.

When we were done here, we went to nearby Cahir for lunch.  We thought we would get out of the town of Cashel as it was pretty busy.  We walked by here and Gerard said he had to have a picture next to this.  Check out his FB page.

After lunch, we headed down to Blarney Castle which is outside Cork.  The castle has beautiful grounds all around.  You could spend a whole day there.  Here are a couple of pictures of the tower in the castle.


We got Gerard into the stocks.


Another tower at the castle.


Then we had to go kiss the Blarney Stone to get the gift of gab.  We told Gerard he didn’t need to.  But here he is climbing the stairs to go up.  We didn’t count the number but there were over 100.  And they looked like this.

We finally made it to the top and here we go.  Here’s Gerard (we were proud of him doing this), and me, then Darlene kissing the Stone.  John & Judy did it too, although Judy didn’t quite get within kissing distance.  You lean backward and away from one wall, grab the rails and reach way down.  I screamed the whole time.



This is a shot of where it is from the ground - that little opening way up there.


On the way down those 100+ steps, there are lots of little rooms.  This one contained the “Murder Hole”.  You can read the sign yourself.  Ugh.


We left here and went back to Kilkenny to have some dinner before getting back to our place.  Man, it was hopping in Kilkenny on a Saturday night.  The pubs were overflowing, but we managed to find seating in Matt the Millers Pub.  And it was getting loud.














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