There and Back Again: An Irish Tale, Part 3

We left Dublin on Thursday morning to travel to Blarney with a few stops along the way. Our first stop was the Irish National Stud in Kildare, home to some of Ireland finest thoroughbreds. I really wasn't sure how interesting this would be to me, since I see horses quite often here in the States. But I was pleasantly surprised! These stallions were once champions on the race tracks, and they have also produced champion offspring (which is what determines the kind of fee that someone will pay to have their mare bred by a one of the stallions). If my memory serves me right, about 3,000 mares are brought to the farm every year to mate with the stallions. Our favorite "stallion", actually a pony, was Tommy the Teaser (photo #1). Tommy's has somewhat of a rotten job: he is there to help determine which of the mares are ready to mate. If he is placed next to a mare that responds to him, he is then taken (or rather dragged) back to his stall. Poor Tommy! But Dee, our wonderful guide at the farm, told us that they do bring ponies in for Tommy to play with :-) Also there at the Irish National Stud was a beautiful Japanese Garden that we walked through (photo #3).

Our next stop was Cashel in County Tipperary to see the Rock of Cashel, which is a very old monastery that looks like a castle (photo #4). We didn't have much time here, so I wasn't able to walk all the way up to the site, but it was beautiful place. While we were there we ate lunch at a wonderful little place called The Rock Cafe where I had a Tuna and Sweet corn melt on Irish soda bread. It was absolutely delicious, and was one of the best meals I had on the whole trip.

After lunch, we once again boarded the coach to continue our journey to Blarney, and made one more stop at a little port town called Cobh (pronounced "Cove"). Cobh was once known as Queenstown, but after Ireland gained independence from England in 1922, the Irish changed it back to it's original name. While in Cobh we toured the Queenstown Story, which is a museum that tells the history of Irish immigration to Canada, the U.S., and Australia. Just outside the museum entrance was a statue of Annie Moore (photo #5) an Irish girl who was the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island, New York, at the age of 14. There was a really great display about the Titanic, which made a stop there before heading to New York; and there was also a display about the Lusitania, which sank near Cobh in 1915 after being struck by a German torpedo. There was a really nice little cafe in the museum, so many of us sat down to afternoon tea once we finished the tour.

We left Cobh and finally reached our final destination, Blarney Golf Resort. This was the nicest place we stayed in Ireland, and I was sad that we only stayed one night! Once we arrived, we had about 2 hours before dinner would be served in our hotel, so we were able to just hang out in our rooms and rest. Our dinner was a bit more fancy than the previous nights, but there was no dessert there...I guess you either get a mediocre dinner with dessert, or a fancy dinner with no dessert! After dinner, Amanda, Sarah, Manda D. and I stayed down in the hotel bar for several hours, just talking and hanging out. After retiring to our rooms for the night, Amanda and I stayed up til about 2:30 am...not a smart thing to do, considering we had to be up by 7:00am!