This weekend we went to Cork, which is 2.5 hours south of Dublin on the train. We arrived on Friday morning and fulfilled our duty as tourists by going to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone. There are pictures below but basically you lay on your back next to an old man who holds onto you as you grab two poles and lean backwards over the side of the castle to kiss a stone that my mother later referred to as "cold sore city". This apparently gives you the "gift of gab" but frankly I haven't noticed anything different or particularly eloquent in my speaking habits so my ten euro ticket was really for nothing.

The next day we went to some of the local markets and I probably would have spent half of my life savings on all the food we saw but our hostel didn't have a refrigerator (there was water pressure this time though so I can't complain). I found a necklace for 5 euro and was quite impressed with myself for being a bargain hunter until my roommate bartered and ended up only paying 3. Regardless i'll still feel cool if people ask where my necklace is from and I can say "a flea market in Ireland"!

By Sunday morning we were ready to come home and also lucky enough to be in the same area on the train as a troop of screaming boy scouts! This was made a little better by the fact that the food cart sold Pringles and we also passed about a hundred huge green fields filled with baby sheep!

Blarney Castle!

 The grounds of Blarney Castle.

I didn't catch his name but he did make sure I didn't plummet to my death off the top of Blarney Castle. ALSO the Blarney stone is the small chunk of rock near the ends of the black poles.

Scenic Cork! 

Last but not least - finding true love at English Market

Otherwise I had a wave of homesickness earlier this week when U of M played OSU at Crisler Arena and it seemed like everyone and their brother was at the game BUT ME! Regardless, from across the pond, go blue!