Ireland

Another overnight bus/ferry crossing took us across the Irish Sea and deposited us on the Emerald Isle. Our first stop was Cork, which was a pretty underwhelming city. There didn't seem to be much in the city itself, and although the River Lee runs through the centre of town, it wasn't a terribly picturesque river. The reason for going there, though, was to see the Blarney Castle and to kiss the Blarney Stone. You read about that earlier. What was really surprised me was how beautiful the castle grounds were. I just expected to see a castle and kiss the stone, but we spent a few hours walking around the grounds.
Our next stop was Killarney, which was quite beautiful. The town itself is a cute, little town, pretty much like I would expect to find in a tourist area. The main streets had plenty of little shops and restaurants. The restaurants were a bit pricey, but what are you going to do? (Well, if you're us, you go to the pancake bar for dinner).
The real treat in Killarney was the national park, however. We rented bikes and rode through it, getting a good look at the three big lakes in the park and the very scenic Torc waterfall. We also went around Ross Island, which is fronted by the ruins of a castle and which offers some dramatic lake views on the opposite side.
Our final Irish stop was in Dublin, the capital. We walked through the Temple Bar area, which was kind of neat with all the people, but we didn't find much to do there. We found dinner on the other side of the River Liffey, just off a big main boulevard that was fun to walk. (Our second night there we ate dinner outside so we could people-watch, but we were repeatedly harassed by a poor, probably drug-addled woman who kept trying to steal my food.) We took a run to Phoenix Park, which is apparently the largest urban park in Europe. It's apparently big enough for some large deer with big horns (Chelsey has decided they're reindeer), because we saw a trio of them, probably no more than four metres away from us. They were just patiently grazing on the edge of the field near the Wellington Monument as several games of cricket went on in front of them. I helped the deer when they decided they wanted to cross the road; I waved to warn the drivers there were deer in the way.
Our big stop in Dublin was the Guinness factory. I'm still not a big beer fan, but Guinness was among the best. And I had fun pulling the perfect pint. It may say something about me, though, that one of the most interesting parts of the tour was the section on barrel-making. I had no idea how they did that!
-Jason