Friday, April 4, 2008

Bumstyle in Blarney

The next day we got up early and took a train down to Cork. From Cork we went to Blarney. Blarney is a small town, its main attraction is the Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone. I talked to an elderly couple that owned a souvenir store in downtown Blarney. While asking him about hostels/accommodation's he told me a sad story. He said that there use to be live music every night at the two pubs in downtown and it was pretty lively. But then Sept 11th happened and afterwards the American visitors stopped coming. Tourists numbers went down dramatically. Now there is live music only on the weekends at one of the pubs. He ended his story with "That Osama Bin Ladin, he changed the world".

I had a leg of lamb for dinner, it was pretty good. Gene and Nate had fish and chips, but I figured I'd get enough of that in Britain. We couldn't find any hostels that were reasonable, 55Euros/person at best, so we hiked to the edge of town to camp out. The first location we found was pretty good, but Gene touched the plants that were growing all around that area and his hand started to burn. After wiping the tears from Gene's eyes, we moved to another area that wasn't infested with these skin burning plants. The weather was pretty good for camping, but birds woke us up pretty early.
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In morning we visited Blarney Castle. The castle's doorways were all extremely narrow. I hit my head several times moving through the castle. The spiraling stairways were claustrophobic and each step was about the width of your shoe. A cold breeze always rushed through the narrow passageways. After we made it to the top of the Castle we each kissed the Blarney Stone for good luck. We checked out the cave system as well which was pretty neat.

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4 comments:

  1. Bruce and Meribeth BuhrApril 6, 2008 at 12:35 PM

    Wei, We just had a visit with your folks, and they turned us on to your blog. We enjoyed your pictures and dialogue. Keep up the good work!!

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  2. Thats awesome, you guys are camping already. How did you all sleep? Did you and gene end up spooning ;) Keep the posts coming man. Makes for a good read at work.

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  3. sweet, did you kiss the blarney stone for good luck?

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  4. Buhrs, thanks I'll keep at it!

    Tino, Camping was pretty good. Saved us money and it was quite an experience. It rained a little bit but we had our goretex bivy sacks so it worked out ok. Oh yeah and I was big spoon.

    Jerome, of course. Now with my new found power of luck, I willed Mario Chalmer's 3 point shot to go in via CBSSportsline in middle of the night from a hostel in Galway.

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