Yeah Cork Yeah

Presently, I'm too exhausted to be charming and witty. But I have to update this thingy.

So the Erasmus international student group that I mentioned in an earlier post plans trips to major cities in Ireland. Meaning I don't have to do the work and plan it myself. Win. This past weekend, 200 of us went to Cork city, which is on the southwestern side of Ireland. We left on Friday morning, and took a long annoying bus ride (our driver wouldn't shut up to let us sleep, and he wasn't even clever or funny to make up for it) to Cobh, which is a town about half an hour away from Cork. It was scenic, with a harbor and a pretty cathedral. But the weather was dreadful. I'm not even talking rain (I LOVE rain now), I'm talking wind that can blow a side-view mirror clear off a coach bus...which is ACTUALLY what happened while we were on the highway. So we spent a good deal of time in the cathedral and getting food instead of walking around.

We then arrived in Cork at about...5pm? Yes. And we stayed in the Kinlay House hostel. I wasn't prepared for this, but in order to shower, I had to hold down a button (like those sinks in public bathrooms) and keep pressing it if I wanted a steady flow or water. Which, by the way, never got hot. As a matter of fact, it was pleasant if it reached lukewarm temperature. But it's cool that's what student traveling is ABOUT. The nonsense that you'll deal with to save some $$$

That night, after dinner at Luigi Malone's (an Irish Italian restaurant if you can't tell by that awesome name), we went out for a Pub Crawl. Now, in Dublin, they have special guided pub crawls that feature music or literary history. Our pub crawl in Cork was guided by the leaders of the Erasmus group, and it featured drinking. In four different pubs. I don't remember their names, but I can tell you that one of them had a huge screen and only showed rugby games on it, and another one looked like a log cabin and played metal the whole time. The other two apparently didn't make an impression on me.

Unfortunately, after this sort of pub crawl, people are generally useless the next day. As in sleeping til 12:30 and then being afraid to go outside because the wind sounds like 1000 dying baby foxes. But of course, we eventually forced ourselves to brave the ugly weather and walk about town a bit. Sadly, Cork city isn't really known for it's museums like Dublin, so we just ended up checking out two decently famous churches, St. Anne's and North Cathedral. After taking enough pictures to satisfy our tourist consciences, we went back a slept more...since that night we were promised reduced entry price and a couple free drinks at a club (priorities). It was grand.

Sunday we left the city to come back to Dublin, but not before stopping a few hours at the Blarney Castle. This was really the highlight of the trip. The castle was amazing. The grounds and gardens were gorgeous. Even in the dark cloudy rain, I could not resist walking around outside the whole time.

Oh yeah, and I kissed the Blarney Stone. Let me tell you what this entails.

1) You have to walk up these very narrow, steep, winding tower stairs. Been to the top of the Statue of Liberty? Yeah those stairs have got NOTHING on these ones.

2) You have to walk around the top of the castle, over some nice safe not deadly at all SLIPPERY MEDIEVAL ROCKS.

3) A man yells at you to turn around, sit on a soggy mat, and lean your body backwards while he holds you upside down over the edge of the castle to kiss the bloody rock.

4) Some other man yells at you to take a ticket to spend 10 euro on the awkward picture he took of you struggling to contort your body, wondering if you're fully ok with the old grumpy guy touching your waist.

But all discomfort and confusion aside, it really was GRAND.