Whisky and chippies for breakfst

We didn’t sleep very well last night. It was a combination of things really. Firstly, there were ‘hoons’ going up and down the road in there revved out cars (it turned out this one particular guy was the pizza delivery man, I was wondering if he could claim his car alterations for work expense?) then, just as we got into our PJs and into bed the Garda, police to you and I showed up, they pulled up next to us, looked at the car and then left. We then wondered if we were breaking the law by parking over night in the free parking zone and were they going to ask us to move on? So we were keeping an eye out all night really, any car we heard we’d pull back the curtain a crack and have a squiz. Then at 3.30am I had to go to the loo BALDY, the only problem being that the public loo we had been over joyed to see yesterday wasn’t actually working, so I had to wake Chris to get him to come stand guard for me, THEN at 6.30am I woke with a start as I heard the “beep beep beep” of a truck reversing and thought that we were being towed. I sat up bolt right and shook Chris who wasn’t impressed when it turned out to just be a delivery truck reversing from a store. Oops. We were up now. We got changed and, needing the loo again but deciding that in sun light it wasn’t very appropriate to just find a bush, went in search for a Maccas, as we figured they always open at about 6am for brekki. We did find a Maccas, but they weren’t open and wouldn’t be until 9am (which really defeats the brekki menu) so, now making random turns on the road in desperation, we came across a Tesco that was open. Good ol’ Tesco, you can always relie on them it would seem!

We still had 3 hours to kill until Jameson opened for their tours, so we went back to our original parking spot, pulled over, jumped in the back and had a rest. We didn’t think that pulling all our camp stove equipment for brekki would be very appropriate so we settled on opening snack packs of chips for brekki. We’re not proud of this but we were hungry and it was the only food product we had that didn’t require heating.

Jameson’s finally opened and we went our tour, and I have to say, it was great. Much much better than the Guinness one. Chris in particular enjoyed this tour, he’s been drinking Jamesons forever (so he tells me but I can’t envisage Jan feeding him this as a child somehow…) and he has quite a collection happening at home, so he was in 7th heaven. I was just glad that there were free loos at hand, not that I needed them, but just knowing that they were there was nice.

After this tour and taste testing of Chris' favourite beverage we made tracks for Blarney Castle, where we were told we would (or should) kiss the Blarney stone. Doing this will apparently give you 'the gift of the gab' and you'll be able to tell fabulous tales just as the Irish do. Only, to achieve this 'gift' it means you must first climb to the top of the castle, line up and then, with the aid of an elderly gentleman, lie down, lean right back (allowing your head to fall back) and kiss the low part of a jutting out stone. Not such a hard feat one might think, but it is if you're afraid of heights! As we climbed up and up and I could see the view from the top of the castle I was umming and ahhing to Chris about kissing the stone. I also reasoned that with the recent outbreak of Swine Flu would kissing a stone that millions of others had be considered all that hygienic or wise? I then saw that they have spray and wipe on hand, but that apparently is only used when a woman wearing too much lipstick kisses the stone... god knows we don't want it to get dirty...

So, with a few deep breaths and without once looking down, I kissed the stone. It was quick, very quick in fact, but I did it. I can't say I noticed the 'gift' being bestowed upon me all at once, to be honest I was a little speechless for awhile, but I think it was just the shock of it all setting in... I managed to recover quickly enough to take a snap shot of Chris kissing the stone, he had no problems. I'm happy to say that I'm okay now and I think Chris now regrets talking me into kissing the stone. I liked a good chat before, now he can't shut me up. I guess the stone really does work.

It was a shame that we only had a short time at Blarney Castle, there is so much to do there and it really is a lovely spot. We only managed a fleeting visit as we had so far to drive later that afternoon, had we had more time it would have been nice to check out the gardens, the house, the woods surrounding it all... it looked lovely.

After all this we drove and drove and DROVE onto Dublin where we found a rather nice caravan park to pull over for the night and camp. It had everything we needed so we were very pleased to be here the night! There were many clean loos, many clean showers, many nice camping spots and NO mozzies or midgies, so we were quite literally, happy campers!

written by

Chris and Emily on June 3, 2009 from Dublin, Ireland

from the travel blog: Europe 2009

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