Cork Trip, Part 2: Cobh

     On Sunday, we five travelers ventured to the seaside town of Cobh (pronounced Cove), just a half-hour train ride away.  The early morning train ride itself was great--the train tracks were literally built on the beach.  Aside from its loveliness, its main attraction is that it was the last port of call for the Titanic.  When we arrived, the sun was shining on the quaint town above us.  Cobh is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been--I think I've found my future retirement community.

Within twenty minutes, the clouds began rolling in.

     We ran around the town, getting pelted by the most violent rain I've ever experienced, trying to find someplace to eat.  Unfortunately, most places were closed on a Sunday until we managed to find a restaurant that boasted "Real Irish Breakfasts!", was manned by a very French chef, and played Eminem and Sweet Home Alabama over the speakers.  All the same, the food was fantastic and extremely cheap.

     After the sun broke through the thunderclouds, we ventured up the hill to St. Patrick's Cathedral (I swear, there's a St. Patrick's Cathedral in every Irish city).  The outside was gorgeous, and the priest saw us gawking and invited us to look around after the service ended.  We entered the cathedral at the time he had told us, only to discover that the pews were almost completely filled.  We snuck into a back row and sat for about thirty seconds until a line of people began marching towards us.  It turns out we had interrupted Communion AND stolen people's seats, who were now beginning to return from Communion.  Needless to say, we made a very hasty exit.

     We also saw the famous Deck of Cards houses.  The houses are identical, except each is built on a different level to accommodate the hillside, and each is a different color.

   After that, we wandered around Cobh a bit longer before taking the train back to Cork.

I think this has something to do with the Titanic.

The sun over the seaside.

Guardian Angel of Cobh?

 
   We returned to Cork thoroughly pleased with our adventure.  We had a few hours to kill, and wandered around Cork proper until we ended up in the best place in the world.

The best hot chocolate place I've ever been to.  It was....indescribable.

When I'm rich and famous, I may travel to Cork just to get this hot chocolate.

Sleepy girlies.

    Thoroughly exhausted, we crashed for about an hour, and then got on the bus back to Dublin.  Thankfully, the heat was working, but this time the bus was completely full and very loud.  I got a fantastic 14 hours of sleep that night, and I've never been happier.

Cork Trip, Part 1: Blarney Castle

     This past weekend, I journeyed to the Irish city of Cork with a few fellow adventurers.  Cork is on the southern edge of Ireland, slightly inland from the sea (Dublin is on the eastern coast).  Bright and early Saturday morning we hopped on a bus to Cork, hoping to get some sleep on the three-hour ride.  We would have, except for one small problem--the bus didn't have heating.  I curled up in the fetal position the whole time, trying to keep warm in my coat and trying to keep amused by blowing frost rings with my breath.  Neither venture proved successful.
     Once we arrived, however, things drastically improved.  We dropped off our stuff at the hostel, ate mayonnaise-y prepackaged sandwiches at the train station, and took another bus to Blarney Castle.  This bus had heating, thankfully, and was a measly 30 minute ride.
     Blarney Castle was beautiful.  Built 600 years ago, the castle itself is a crumbling shell of stones, but some parts are still safely explorable.  The most well-known attraction is the famous Blarney Stone.  If you kiss the stone, it supposedly gives you the gift of eloquence.  It's set below the battlements at the very top of the castle; to get there, you have to climb an infinite number of claustrophobia-inducing spiral staircases.  It was pouring outside, so the stairs were slippery as well, a fun combination.  Once you got to the top, you have to lie down on your back and crane backwards until your torso hangs completely over nothing.  (You have iron bars to hold onto, but still.)  Then you lean down as far as possible and kiss the Blarney Stone while backwards and upside-down.  It's actually kind of fun, once you get over your fear of imminent death.

Kissing the Blarney Stone.

Gift of eloquence: acquired.

     The walk up through the castle is an experience in itself.  Although old and crumbling, the castle is still quite beautiful.

Approaching the castle.

Roomies at the castle.

I love this picture so so much.  (It's not me--just another girl  from the program with curly hair.)

Me inside the castle, with a mysterious red blob floating past.

The view of the grounds from the top of the castle.

The view from the battlements.

The grounds were equally gorgeous; they span over 60 acres and are filled with little gardens and ponds.

On our way to the castle!

The walk to the gardens.

Blarney House, not open to visitors until May :(

In one of the gardens, we saw a sign for the wishing steps.  The legend is that the witch of the steps will grant your wish if you walk up and down the steps with your eyes closed and you think intently of your wish the whole time.  We decided to go for it, and being stereotypical girls, all wished for the same thing--true love.  Aaw.

Making my wish come true!

The Willow Tunnel in the Bog Garden.

     After exploring Blarney Castle, we stopped in the Woollen Mills store, with their famous Irish wool sweaters.  We spent far too many euros, but stepped out of the store with some of the warmest sweaters in the world.

   Up next--our Saturday adventure to the seaside town of Cobh (pronounced Cove).

Trampolining!

     I have decorated my room in the latest fashion--wall hangings.  And these are not just any wall hangings: no, these are top-notch, designer wall hangings.  Want to guess? Underwear.  Underwear and socks.   Pairs of underwear and socks are draped off of every bedpost, spread out all across my desk.  Not only is it extremely fashion-forward and makes the room smell like clean laundry, it helps accomplish one important task--drying my laundry.
     Our laundry machine is one of many malfunctioning items in our apartment.  The machine cleans them quite well, but when it comes to drying, it clearly does not understand its duties.  Thus our whole apartment is regularly decorated with pants, shirts, socks.  It's quite glamorous.  The poor maintenance man has been at our apartment three times already, and has to come back at least twice more.  First he fixed my broken toilet seat, then changed the moldy curtains, then looked at the washing machine, and now he has to get us a new fridge, repair my broken towel rack, and fix the TV.  Every time he comes back, we've discovered something else wrong.  He's too nice to say this, but I'm pretty sure we are the DestructoGirls in his mind.  I, for one, will be completely satisfied once he replaces our fridge and our milk stops turning into Elmer's-Glue-like sludge after a few days.  Is it too much to ask?
   
     Other things going on:  I joined the Trampoline Club!  Along with the Dance Society (for ballroom/Latin dance lessons), the Choral Society (we're singing Brahm's Requiem!), Christian Union, and the International Society.  It's quite exciting.

     Trampolining has been an interesting challenge.  As many of you know, I am an unmitigated klutz, and I didn't think that bouncing five feet in the air would help. I was right.  I started out like this....

I look so scared.

....and ended up like this.

....for good reason.

Which is surprisingly how you're supposed to look, albeit with infinitely more grace.

     Ballroom dance has also been extremely fun.  Again, the klutziness doesn't help, but everyone was a beginner so I didn't feel too bad.  We learned the cha-cha and the Argentinean Tango, an embarrassingly sexy dance that I don't quite have the hips for.  True to form, my polite British partner (a superb dancer himself) assured me I was wonderful and very graceful.  It was a bald-faced lie, but I didn't mind too much.

Irish Mythology

     This weekend has been full of adventures.  On Saturday, we visited the most touristy and stereotypical place in all of Ireland--The Leprechaun Museum.  Yes, that's right.  There is a Leprechaun Museum in Dublin.  If I were Irish, I would try to eradicate every mention of those nasty little buggers, but here, they profit from them.  In the museum's defense, however, it was very interesting and surprisingly informative about Irish mythology. 

     If I can remember correctly, they believe that Ireland was originally inhabited by the Light people, a wonderful race that loved, well, light.  In those days, Ireland was sunny and beautiful, with glorious weather year-round.  Scotsmen from the north envied Ireland for its great weather (as Scottish weather was notoriously bad), and decided to invade to get the land and its weather for themselves.  They defeated the Light people, but agreed to split Ireland in half.  The catch--the Light people had the underground half.  The Light people, furious, took away the sunny skies of Ireland, leaving it as cold and dreary as it is today.

     The Light people became the greatest enemy of man (specifically, Irishmen).  It is said that the hawthorn and holly trees are sacred to them, and whoever cuts them down will be cursed.  This belief is still so strong in the Irish people that when JFK was building a house in Ireland, he had to get Welsh builders to build it because there was a single hawthorn tree on the property that needed to be removed.  And that, my friends, is when the Kennedys began having their tragedies, and all because of a single hawthorn tree (or so Culchies say).

     Aside from the mythology, the museum was quite fun.  It began with a model of the Giant's Causeway, then led you into a fantastic room where you magically became the size of a leprechaun. 

The model of the Giant's Causeway.  The real thing is up in northern Ireland (and I'm going to see it soon!).

In the giant's chair.

     Then, on Sunday, I had two adventures.  First I visited St. Steven's Green, a Central-Park-like oasis about 2 minutes from my apartment.  It was lovely.  There were winding paths and statues and duck ponds with extremely insistent birds, along with the general beauty of perpetually green grass.

The whole time, the kid was shrieking "Shoo! Shoo, birdies! Shoo!"

This statue commemorates the infamous famine.

Disturbing fountain statue.

There were swans in the bird pond!  My inner 5-year-old was dancing.

Stone courtyard in the middle of the green.

    We also visited the Chester Beatty Library, which houses a rare collection of old manuscripts and books. I saw the oldest known copy of the Gospel of John (180 A.D.!), along with incredibly old copies of the other gospels.  There was also an Egyptian papyrus scroll with love poems on it (1100 B.C.!), ancient Qurans, a Chinese emperor's robe, along with thousands of other books and manuscripts.  The grandmotherly tour guide talked faster than a teenager, which was a bit disconcerting, but I'd still like to go back and take another look at the Gospels.