We awake at 6 am yet again blaming the sun coming up so early and throwing off our body clock.
A breakfast buffet at the hotel was on the cards, so we make our way down in the slowest and smallest elevator of all time.
Ten years later, we pop out at the lobby and commence the stuffing of the face. This was becoming quite the tradition.
We a little bag full of bread, croissants and cashews swiped from the buffet, we check out and drop our bags back to the car.
Before we leave Cork we go on a bit of a morning marathon walk to the city park to see if we can find some more Mallard ducks. Low and behold, we find a cute little lake with 5 mallards eagerly awaiting our stolen bread.
Not quite as friendly as the mallards in Dublin, we can only hand feed one and have to throw to the rest.
Next on our walk was the Cork Gaol which sat quite high on a hill. By the time we arrived, we were sweaty and buggered.
It was quite a nice building as far as Gaol’s go. In fact, most prisoners back in the day would commit crimes just to be inside getting fed and watered.
We take ourselves on a tour inside and see the cells, the Wardens room, punishment rooms, exercise yards and even a radio room where they used to broadcast the Cork radio stations from.
Time to head back to the car now and make tracks for the muchly anticipated Blarney Castle.
A short drive of about 15 minutes and we were pulling into the carpark. We grab our tickets and are told by the not so friendly ticket seller that it would be at least an hour until we get into the castle. WTF, an hour? Booo!
Blarney Stone
So we make our way up to the castle, trying to get ahead of a bus tour group that just got there as well. And then boom, we hit the line and are in it for near on 2 hours.
The line went from the pathway to the castle, to the ground floor, up some stairs, through another room, up a very tight circular staircase and then finally up to the very top where we could see the Blarney Stone getting ravished over and over again.
The bucket list of kissing the Blarney Stone now crossed off. We head back down through the castle being able to properly explore it now. Once outside we make our way down the side of the castle to the caves which run underneath.
We get all the way to the end, turn around and then SMACK, Adam collides quite sharply with the low rocky roof. Head spinning, he pulls himself together until we get out and assess the damage. A fair old scuff but not split, phew.
Time to hit the road to our next stop for the night, Waterford. We go to put the address into the GPS and nothing comes up…
So we aim for the city centre and hope for the best. It was also time to get our first tank full of petrol and damn it was expensive. It worked out to be about $3 per litre… Insane.. and about $100 to fill up our little Clio’s tank.
Pulling into Waterford, we circle around trying to get some wifi until we gave up, parked and walked around looking like idiots getting excited over unlocked wifi signals.
We finally find a signal and map out where we need to go and after a quick stop to grab a coffee at O’Briens we head back and make tracks with our new route planned.
As it turned out, we drove straight past the B&B on the way in.. Easy to miss though we pull into what looks like a normal house just off the main road. We are greeted by a old Irish lady who gives us the lay of the land.
A traditional looking Irish pub just over the road, we head there for dinner and to watch the Brazil vs Switzerland match. The dinner was bloody amazing and the game quite entertaining finishing 1 – 1 with one epic goal by Brazil.
We walk the entire 2 minutes back to the hotel and decide to call it a night, we have an early start and a big 4 hour trip to Belfast tomorrow, goodbye Ireland!
