Ireland 2012: Day Five - Blarney & Kinsale

This morning we departed Ballyseede Castle for Blarney Castle and Blarney Woolen Mills. After a brief stop for coffee (just the regular stuff this time!) we arrived at Blarney Woolen Mills, parked the coach and headed over in the rain to the castle to climb up and kiss the famous stone. This requires one to climb 110 stone steps up a narrow circular staircase to the castle's ramparts. Once here a nice local gentleman will hold on to you as lie on your back and lean out a hole in the castle wall and kiss the Blarney Stone located, now, above your head. Not everyone was willing to exchange bodily fluids with perfect strangers, so some chickened out. Then it was off to shop at the mills. This place had everything Irish from soup to nuts! Well, not literally!! Lots of nice stuff for the kids and the ladies. Even a men's section. Lou gave a whole new meaning to the term "clothes horse"! See below. They had a beautiful pub at the mills and most folks took advantage of that for lunch. After a couple of hours of shopping everyone was back on the bus and we headed off to Jamesons to learn about Irish whiskey.

The video that introduced our tour was a bit over-hyped but the tour itself was quite informative. At the end everyone got to sample some Jamesons and then hit the gift shop. Boarding the coach again we were off to our hotel, The Trident, in Kinsale. The hotel was right on the water front in this quaint little town.

Supper was at the hotel, and an unexpected treat was a live performance of the Irish sitcom, Father Ted. Fortunately Seamus has shown a few episodes of the show on the bus en route to the hotel. Otherwise, we might not have understood what was going on. The show was not as good as the sitcom, but it certainly made the evening pass more quickly. There was an introductory cocktail party before the show so we were able to interact with a few of the characters beforehand.

Blarney castle to the left. Below people queued up to kiss the stone.