I have discussed a bit about the Ireland tour and my tour
family before this, but here is the huge post about those crazy five days.
Before I really begin, let me be clear. There may be some photos that have no
captions or descriptions or anything. This is because I have no recollection of
where they were taken, so just look at them and say “OOOOOO PRETTY” or
something equally as nice.
Our tour started at 8:30 in the morning. I had made the
promise to myself to try to actually get to know the people on this tour unlike
the Scotland tour. I put on my “charm” and told my friend my plan. She agreed
that we needed to branch out and make some friends, but I don’t think either of
us was prepared for what happened on the tour. We had created real bonds with
some of the group. Mind you the entire group was 29 tourists, a tour guide, and
a bus driver and I will be honest, the tour family (aka Shamrocker fam), in my
opinion, does not span the entire group. I would say about half of them are
part of the fam. How did the family come about? I have no idea. It just sort of
happened. People just clicked and I forced my way into their friendships ;) In
all honesty, I probably forced a few people into hanging out with me, but for
the most part, I think people actually liked me. Did I tell you that some of
our family was a bit incestuous? Some of these relationships occurred rather
quickly (in my opinion, which shouldn’t really mean much to others), while
others took a few days to form. There were even a few that people thought might
happen, but didn’t. Either way though, the family was a bit mixed up. The
majority of the family are Australians, but I am glad to say that USA and
Canada are well represented.
So back to the actual trip itself, our first stop was to a
small town called SOMETHING. It was
really just a chance for people to stretch their legs and grab some grub, but
it was cute to see. There was a nice looking church which is pictured below.
After getting back on the bus, we traveled a bit further to
see our first castle or the tour. The scaffolding really ruins the picture, but
if you ignore it, the castle looks pretty cool.
After that castle, we made our
way to Blarney Castle to get the gift of gab and eloquence by kissing the
Blarney stone. Apparently it did not work for me. Apologies to you all!
Here is the castle from the outside and the inside and then
finally a picture of me kissing the stone!
As you can see, you have to lean back and hold onto railings
to get to the actual stone. There is even someone there to hold you to prevent
you from hurting yourself/falling/kissing the wrong stone. I didn’t want to
kiss the stone where most other people had kissed it, so I leant back as far as
I possibly could to get fewer germs. I really wanted to be able to have the
gift of eloquence so I gave that stone the biggest kiss ever!
After kissing the stone, we wandered the castle grounds.
Here is a picture from the top of the castle
Unfortunately, my camera battery died and I was unable to
take anymore photos. The rest of the day was spent exploring Kilarney, the town
where our hostel was. We also met Pa, a story teller in one of the pubs, who
ended up being very vulgar and creepy. Then we went out as a group to a club
and danced a good part of the night away. There we saw Pa again and he was even
more creepy than earlier. A fifty something year old who says he has kids and a
wife, should not grab at 19 year olds. That ends the first day of our adventure
with Shamrocker.
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