But continuing my Ireland Adventures... (In which I add photos, b/c I'm home now and can do that).

March 28, 2006
7:30 a.m.

It's fairly awkward kissing that damn stone. You have to lie on your back and bend backwards, holding on to two rails at either side, having a guy hold you around your knees, waist, whatever, so you don't fall down the giant hole. My shoulder has mostly stopped hurting from yesterday but still aches a little.

From the stone it was on to the Blarney Woollen Mills for shopping. Oy. There's only so much shopping one person can do. Seriously. I'm already getting sick of it. I didn't buy much, but the stuff here's cheaper - so I bought a Guinness shirt. Lunch was with the three American sisters in the bar at the mills. I was thinking of buying a bunch of yarn and a knitting pattern to make myself an Arran sweater, but wouldn't have been able to fit it into my suitcase... not to mention that those sweaters ALWAYS make me itchy, no matter what I've got underneath.

From Blarney we moved on to Killarney. We arrived at the hotel about half-five, and I lounged until dinner at 6:45 (at the hotel... kinda wish there were a few more options, but when dinner's included in the cost of the tour...). The hotel is nicer than the one in Dublin and has all sorts of amenities. There's a gym and a pool here, which hotel guests can use. Since I haven't been jogging at all since leaving York, I decided to go swim laps. I had to buy a swim cap. Oh, it was sexy. Really. I've been finding myself stupidly tired in the evenings, though, and was in bed again last night by 10, and I slept until 6:30 this morning.

There was some talk about going on a jaunting car ride out to a local manor house (something only tourists do, but, hey, when in Rome...?). It's pouring rain right now, though, so I don't think we're going to be going - a horse-drawn conveyance wouldn't be particularly pleasant.

10:06 a.m.
We're driving the Ring of Kerry right now, which is basically just a scenic drive through the south of Ireland. The first site/stop was a tweed/woollen shop (notice a trend?) at the Gap of Dunloe.

11:15 a.m.
Just stopped at a little open-air museum called the Kerry Bog Village. It's tiny. About 6 buildings. No interpreters, though, so no chance to pick interpretative brains. I'm sure I must have smelled a peat fire somewhere before, though, because the smell wasn't unfamiliar and was actually kind of comforting. I don't get it. There's no reason for me to feel even remotely at home in this country - and yet I sort of do.

1:25 p.m.
Have just finished lunch at a place called Scarriff. It's this restaurant on a cliff, looking over the Atlantic ocean (first time I've seen the Atlantic!). The sun has come out, more or less. That also means that it's quite clear and you can see a fair way into the distance, so the view is spectacular.

The ground in this part of Ireland is extremely rocky and not particularly useful agriculturally. There are rushes and heather growing in every patch of ground. The mountains have been stripped in several areas by overgrazing, and the grey rock shows through. The gorse is beginning to bloom, so there are patches of bright yellow dotting the otherwise brown/grey landscape.

3:10 p.m.
We've stopped at Moll's gap. Not much here except another bloody woollen store, but the view is stunning yet again. The mountains here part into a bowl-like depression. I'm missing out on some of the greenness of Ireland by not being here in the summer, but you get a sense that it would be even lovelier if some of the plants woke up from their winter sleep.

3:25 p.m.
Ooh! Ooh! Just got to see the lakes of Killarney. Not that that's particularly exciting, but there's a folk song about them, so it's nice to see some of the places that I've been singing about for years on end.

March 29, 2006
8:30 a.m.
You'll never believe what I just watched on TV. She-Ra! Oh yeah. It's on RTÉ 2 this morning. My childhood is coming back to haunt me in small doses.

After stopping to see the lakes we returned to Killarney proper. I went and did a bit of wandering around town, and found an internet café in which to post installment #2 of my trip diary and check my email. Killarney's a fairly small city and is mostly geared towards tourists - so there's not that much to see if you're not into souvenirs. And like I mentioned yesterday, I've been stupid tired at night. Music in the pubs mostly starts around 10, and when I have to be up at 6-something the next day, my body hates me. Needing 8 hours of sleep a night sucks. And I don't really get any recovery time after this trip since I need to write my witchcraft paper right away.

10:25 a.m.
We've stopped a ways out of Listowel at the Tabert ferry crossing over the river Shannon. The weather is beautiful - we've been blessed that way so far - it rains when we're on the bus, but when we're ready to go out and do things it stops. There are only a few wispy clouds in the sky at the moment. You can see for miles. I had to wear my sunglasses.

11:45 a.m.
Just stopped at the small town of Spanish point (called that b/c the Spanish Armada was wrecked near here and many of the Spanish sailors and solderis washed up on shore here... and were promptly killed by the British). The beach is actually sandy, rather than rocky, although there are som rocks that jut up out of the seaweed doesn't smell too bad today. It's thick and flat - almost like strips of heavy-duty oilcloth.

1:10 p.m.
We've stopped at some tiny town called Lahinch on the West Coast where we just had great fish and chips at a pub called O'Looney's. No joke. The service was great, too.

2:30 p.m.
Have just finished visiting the Cliffs of Moher. They are absolutely amazing. My fear of heights mostly kept me well back from the edge, behind the little safety wall, which is fine by me. At the top of the cliffs is O'Brien's Castle...

March 30, 2006
8:50 a.m.
The cliffs make you feel very small. The birds were circling around the cliff face and I imagine that, had the place not been swarming with tourists, it would have been amazingly spiritual. Calming, awe-inspiring... And, oddly, I could see how people - not necessarily even people that we would normally consider suicidal - could just walk straight off the edge. It's so... oddly calm and I can easily see someone wanting to join that calmness. I suppose that on a shitty day it's probably rather the opposite - wavy, stormy, loud crashing waves, a sense of massive power - you'd probably be very humbled, and, again, could just walk straight off the edge.

It began to rain last night as we arrived in Galway. Pour rain, in fact.

2:45 p.m.
But nonetheless I felt th eneed to go for a walk - the food on this trip has been pretty damaging and since I haven't been jogging at all this week I feel like ass. So I walked from Salthill as far as the Spanish Arch in town, took a few pics, turned around and went back to the hotel. It took nearly 1.5 hours.

Dinner was at the hotel, and then I turned in early yet again, only to be woken up at 11 p.m. by my next-door neighbours. There are a couple of very odd people on this tour - M and M. We all thought they were mother and son, but they're not. She's gotta be, like, 70 years old AT LEAST, she's short, fat, obnoxious like you wouldn't believe - she asks questions that have already been answered only five minutes ago, and they're generally restricted to the price of real estate and the social welfare system in Ireland. Her travelling companion (who, I think, she paid to come on this trip with her) is about my age, maybe a little older, and is absolutely flamingly gay. They apparently met because he's a concierge at a hotel where she owns a time share. I can see how they became friends as they're both unfailingly loud and rude. He also has a bit of an obsession with Dolphins.

But anyway, their room is next to mine and she was on the bloody phone jabbering away to someone at home in Connecticut or something, and she seemed to think that because she's 3000 km from home she had to speak 3000 times louder.

4 p.m.
Then I was woken again at 3 a.m. because M2 came home. He must seriously be out trawling, because he hasn't gotten back to the hotel before 3 a.m. yet. And they were laughing and giggling and shouting and being pains in the arse generally. I wanted to pound on the wall and tell them to shut up.

This morning we went to Killary Fjord. We went on a 2-hour Catamaran cruise of the fjord. More for the scenery than anything else. It was fantastic. Not just the scenery, but also the scenery. The three men on the ship's crew were all in their 20s and were all bloody gorgeous. One had a sort of baby face with red hair, another looked like Colin Farrell...

Gotta run - I'll finish this later...