Thursday, May 27, 2010

Cullen, Blarney, and County Cork!

What a busy and awesome day! So for starters my Uncle Tadhg picked us up at 9 from Killarney and we packed our stuff up and went onward to Cullen to see some of my family, some houses, and my great grandparents' graves. Cullen was beautiful and then from there Tadhg took us to Blarney where we explored the Blarney Castle and, of course, kissed the Blarney stone. While we were there we actually ran into a girl who was in classes with Jen at TCNJ, weird right? Somehow we ran into someone with relation to every person BUT Dave, instead of the other way around as expected!

So after Blarney Tadhg took us to Cork City and dropped us off at the Cork Goal, which is an old prision where we took a tour that was actually really cool and we liked it a lot, plus we had never done a head set audio tour before so that was kind of neat. When we were done there we walked down into the city and explored for a little while, and after crossing the river we stopped in a cafe and had some nice food and just sat and relaxed in the cafe for a while looking at the river. After we were done we had 20 minutes to get to St. Patrick street and find "Sevoy" which we later found to be a shopping complex, and had no real idea where we were going. So we wandered about and managed to find Patrick Street, but wen't up and down and could not find Sevoy. We asked and got sent back and forth until we stopped and walked to the street and looked up to realize that the sign was over our heads the whole time and we couldn't see it from our position. Just as we realized we were in the right spot Tadhg pulled right up to get us again. Perfect.
Next we went back home with him to Glenmire and his house is - the same with every house we saw in Ireland today - beautiful. We stayed and a bunch of family came over and we had a delicious dinner. Tara brought the kids over and we met them (finally! Cute kids!) and when all was said and done, it was time for the main event - a sailboat race!

Micheal was unfortunately stuck late for work so we went with Tadhg to get his boat, the "Lady T" (named after Tara of course!) and we took it out into the water for a race for the Cork Yacht Club (I think it said open since 1720? Crazy!) We of course were no help really, aside from being dead weight to balance the boat out, but it was an awesome race. We sailed around for an hour and ten minutes in total and came in second place in the race, first in the league after today! It was awesome, and it involved lots of scrambling back and forth from side to side on the boat to keep the balance even on turns, and once the sail came swinging back and pinned Jen to the railing and smacked dave in the head... from my angle it was totally awesome though because it sailed right over my face so I was cool, haha! (Dave and Jen are totally fine by the way, Dave did get a little bit of a bloody nose though but he's a trooper!)
After claiming our prize at the award ceremony (a pack of Heiniken) we headed over to Micheal and Tara's place (again, beautiful house) and we hung out there for awhile. It was geat, and when it was finally time to go (around 11:25pm) we headed back to Tadhg's and sat around with everyone talking in the living room for awhile (including singing happy birthday to me at midnight) for quite a while into the morning. The day in Cork was the best day yet, and it is hard to think that tomorrow on the train and in Belfast can compare! Talk to you all soon!

5 comments:

  1. Glad to see that you have having fun!!!

    Cathy<3

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  2. Dave knows someone everywhere. He'll surprise you eventually what a sneaky guy! also today is your birthday. I'll wear our hat today just for you.

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  3. happy birthday pat
    sincerley,brandon grasso

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  4. happy b-day enjoy your trippss
    from aunt mary

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  5. make a memory
    from patti

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