Day 10 Cork, Ireland

We had our alarm set for 8am and just happened to be up before it went off. We were still pulling into the port at Cork and as we ate breakfast beautiful views were going by. No room service today, we ate at the buffet. After breakfast we went back to the room to gather our things and contemplated taking a coat. We did, but the sun was out and was a beautiful day, probably close to 70 and finally a break from the fog. Like the guide told us...today the sun is out and it is a Sunday. Last year the sun came out on a Wednesday. LOL. So today was an exceptionally lucky day for us! :) Our coats were no problem, we just left them on the bus. There was a chance of rain today, so better safe than sorry I suppose. We have our "puffy" coats that fold up into their own pockets, so they are super easy to tote around and just put in the backpack when we need to.

About 10:30 we got on the tour bus and started heading through the countryside of Ireland, Pat our driver and Pat our guide (very popular name here) both did a good job, but Pat the guide talked non-stop. It was honestly quite exhausting. And he said "Ummm" a lot. Ok not just a lot, But. All. The. Time. Sometimes he thought so long for the word he wanted to say I forgot what he was even talking about. He was, however, filled with useful information and sometimes funny jokes. You knew it was a joke because during the delivery of it, he said "ummmm" a lot less. The drive was beautiful as Ireland is very green and slightly hilly, dotted with cows, sheep and beautiful little well-kept homes. After about an hour on the bus we stopped at a little port town called Kinsale. It was quaint and most shops were closed because it is Sunday. We had about an hour and a half to walk around. It was cute and we bought a tea towel and a latte. One side note: from just outside this town, in 1915, the Lusitania was torpedoed, bringing the US into WWI (per Guy and all his little war factoids he is always tossing out...my own personal google). Back on the bus we went through the actual big city of Cork, which was bustling even for a Sunday and had a lot of American stores. I had my eye peeled for a Starbucks to get my Ireland mug but didn't see one, plus we didn't stop, but instead drove a little bit out of the town to a hotel that had a large banquet facility where lunch was waiting for us.

Lunch was a starter of fruit, a bowl of Irish stew and Bailey's cheesecake for dessert. The staff walked around with trays of local beers for us, but they also had Coke and water. A traditional Irish band played while we ate and occasionally two young Irish girls danced. They were good, but it was a good thing they were there because any form of Irish ambiance was non-existent in this facility. Apparently they had a wedding reception there the night before because there were two wedding balloons that had escaped and got trapped at the ceiling. Our table had nice people at it and the place is filled with just Celebrity passengers, all from buses doing the "Best of Ireland" tour. Everything about lunch was just ok, but we weren't expecting anything gourmet...so we shouldn't have been disappointed, but in a way we were. Couldn't they break us up into smaller local pubs? This was very institutional and for the price we paid for the excursion I'd have thought the could have done a bit more when it came to lunch. After all, it was the "Best" of Ireland, right? Ok...'nough said about that.  Heading back to the bus we drove another hour to Blarney Castle. Here lives the famous Blarney Stone. It was at the top of the castle where you had to go up 102 steps of a increasingly smaller staircase then lay on your back to lean back and kiss the stone. The queue to kiss the stone was about 1.5 to 2 hours. Pat asked everyone to please do that first before walking around as they may not have time to do both. With zero desire to stand it a tiny claustrophobic stairwell jammed with people to kiss a germ infested rock was pretty much not on my life's bucket list, so we opted to just walk around the property, which was absolutely beautiful. The Blarney house, where the owner of the estate lives, is usually open to the public, but it is closed until Spring, or June 1. Well, that was 2 days from now, so we just missed it. Either way, it looked lovely.

After walking all around the grounds (it was like a botanical garden) we took lots of pictures and then headed for a little shopping. They had a giant selection of Ireland goodies to choose from and I just couldn't decide. So we didn't buy anything except drinks at the coffee shop and a chance to get on some real wifi. We got 30 minutes for free. So the clock was ticking as to how many photos I could download. I was either going to run out of free wifi, my phone was going to die, or I was going to have to head back to the bus. The one that got me was having to go back to the bus, because after the wifi shut itself down after 30 minutes it let me log right back in. So I didn't quite get three days worth downloaded. Darn. I needed only 30 more minutes to catch up. Maybe tomorrow.

So as we started on the 30 minute ride back to the ship, we got to see what the tide does around here. This morning as we headed away from the port Pat said the tide was up and it looked like we were surrounded by lakes. He said in the evening it is like a marsh. He was NOT joking, as the morning's lakes were now big open areas of mud. I'm surprised there weren't more dead fish flopping around our birds getting their dinner, or maybe even stinky. But this happens daily and was crazy to see. It looked like the cruise ship was down about 8-10 feet from the waterline on the side of the port's stone wall. In my photos I took a picture of the low tide marsh with a boat just sitting in the mud. I suppose in the morning the boat will be floating again. Interesting.

One of the noteworthy things about today's port is that is was the last stop of the Titanic before it headed to America. As we pulled in this morning I envisioned the grand vessel sitting at the port with all the ladies in their long fancy dresses and large decorated hats bustling around the loading area (like in the movie), however on the way back, Pat burst my surrealistic bubble by saying the Titanic didn't actually come all the way into the port, but instead sat just outside so it could get a quick get-away to its final destination. The reason was because it was an important mail carrier from Ireland to the US and was probably making quite a bit of money by doing so because they didn't want to mess anything up by delaying the voyage, thus delaying the mail. It was carrying 1500 bags of mail and about 120 passengers from Cork.

Back in the room we had about an hour and a half or so before dinner and I opted to start my blog over going to tonight's show. We are tired today and the thought of just dinner and coming back into peace and quite and reading our books sounds really good, so I needed to get the blog underway. Guy has taken his shower already, but no need for me to have to get ready all over again just for an hour of dinner, but I'm looking forward to a hot shower as soon as I walk back into the room.

At dinner we were greeted by Ilyana with our usual "Hello darlings, how was your day?" She makes us want to go to dinner just to see her. :) So a quick run-down of food and we'll call it a night. Guy and I both had the caprese salad. It was very good. Then for our entrees I had turkey parmesan and Guy had sea bass with pasta in a white sauce. Again, all very tasty. We ended the night with tiramisu and strawberry angel food cake. So far we are giving food on this ship an A. We'll see if they can maintain this status as we are pretty harsh judges when it comes to our food.

Good night from Ireland. Note: I did get new images up today, but Day 9 Guernsey isn't complete yet.