Blarney Castle

 Cheers!  (ha ha, sorry.)  We began today in scenic Kilkenny, ate our traditional Irish breakfast (I could not eat the black pudding...just...no) and made our way to Blarney castle, near Cork.  (You're a Corker, Shannon, what a Corker you are.  Far and Away.  Anyone?)

Blarney Castle was built by Cormac MacCarthy lord of Muskrat Muscry in the late 15th century.  Cormac was murdered by his brother (to possibly be reincarnated as an author who really likes the post-apocalyptic genre), and his brother in turn was murdered by his nephew, Cormac's son, leading a certain part of the castle to be named "the murder hole."  Hahaha.  Murder hole.  Guess what I'm going to be referring to as "the murder hole" from now on?

In any case, Blarney Castle is most famous for the "stone of eloquence," i.e. the Blarney stone.  There are a few legends about how the stone of eloquence came to be, but one of the most popular is that it's the "Lia Fail," a magical stone on which the Irish kings were crowned.  Since I obviously am in need of the gift of gab, I stood in the long line to get up to the top.  Lizzie, noting that the stair cases were narrow and terrifying, stayed behind, so I had to lock her up in the dungeon for safe-keeping.  (The second to last picture is actually the ice house--that is a gryphon on top.)

So it's not that I thought Lizzie was exaggerating, it's just that she and I have different feelings about heights, in that I am not afraid of them, and she is, and even though she told me this was not an issue of heights, but rather of her not wanting to climb the windy stair cases, I thought it was an issue with heights.

I am wrong a lot.

So there was a little Japanese couple in front of me,  and a family of giant Americans behind me.  I only note the size, because when we got to the spiral stair case portion of our journey of 100 steps, the space was exactly one Shannon high, and one Shannon wide.  You had to haul yourself up the stairs on a terrifying rope, and the giant Americans kept grabbing the rope so hard that they ended up crushing my hand between the rope and the stone wall.  I had to change my death-grip style to a more gentle "please don't let me die here" hold on the front of the rope.  It wasn't wide enough for me to get to my camera and take a picture, but I don't know if the camera could have truly conveyed the terror I felt being crammed in with dozens of my closest friends on a staircase that I could barely squeeze my hips through.  We kept going up and up and up, and there was no air, and and you couldn't see past the person in front of you.  The giant American teenager was nervously narrating his fear and claustrophobia, which WAS NOT HELPING OKAY?

We finally get to the top, and there's a man there who dangles you over the precipitous drop as you hold onto two iron bars.  People were squealing in terror, and the Japanese couple in front of me bailed just before their turn (WHAT? YOU WAITED AN HOUR TO DO THIS. WHY??) and so I waited for the strong arms of Sean the Hero (as the lady in the souvenir picture buying store called him) to keep me from falling out the gaping hole in the castle wall, which at that point, would have been more appealing to me than having to use the death stairs again. (Turns out the stairs on the way down are less frightening.)