Full of Blarney…

Bonjour, tout le monde! I've just returned from a week in Ireland and have tons to share with ya'll! Since it is a new year and all of that, I've decided to do a bit of an overhaul here and will be shifting to a more life(style)-oriented theme with lots of travel (including tips and discount codes wherever I can include them), crafts, decor, photography, books, and the tried and true outfit posts (which will still make up the largest percentage of what's going on here). I'm just really feeling the Kinfolk vibe and have been doing lots of internal reflection and I'd love for it to spill over here. I'm also doing some more in-depth reflective/artsy stuff over on : the daily wonder :,should you feel that you want to hop over and check that out!

Enough of that! On with the Blarney!

When I was 8, and a Brownie Girl Scout, I learned about Ireland and the Blarney Stone as part of our Friendship Fair. I don't know why this stands out in my mind so much, but I clearly remember that one troop had set up a "Blarney" stone for people to kiss and from that moment on, I wanted to go to Ireland and kiss the actual Blarney Stone. Up until about a year ago, I had no clue that I'd have to climb up a crumbly spiral staircase, lay on my back, upside down, dangling over a 7-story drop in order to do so.

We were on a day trip out of London that took us to Cork, Cobh (last port of call for the Titanic before it headed out across… errr… on a fatal rendez-vous with an iceberg), and then to Blarney Castle, so I tried to push the whole hanging upside down thing out of my mind. Once we got to the top, I had to watch a few people kiss the Blarney Stone and suddenly, I found myself laying down and being lowered over the edge. It. Was. Bloody. Terrifying.

But I'm glad I did it, because 8-year old me is feeling a real sense of closure over this bucket list item.

After kissing the stone, we wandered around the Poison Gardens, which are stuffed with poisonous plants, although there was opium poppy and a cannabis plant, so I guess they're looping semi-legal drugs in with the other things that are poisonous. The grounds at the castle are gigantic. There are caves, a rock close, another garden, but being the supernatural/mythological junkie that I am, we opted to visit the Wishing Steps (if you can walk down them and back up with your eyes closed and while making a wish, the wish is supposed to come true (I only made it down the steps… walking up them backwards wasn't in the cards for me)), the Witch's Kitchen, Druid's Circle, hermit's cave, and fairy glade. Not a ton of history that I could see about these spots, but legend has it that the Blarney witch is trapped in a stone on the grounds. She comes out at night and cooks in her kitchen and sometimes, if you wander the grounds at dawn, you can still see the embers of her fire glowing in the early morning sunlight!

Pretty cool! Gives me shivers, whether it's true or not!

All in all, our first day in Ireland was a success! Got to see lots of the country, wander through history, and fulfill a childhood wish! For more info on Blarney Castle, click HERE. For the tour we took, click HERE (we got 10% off with code: KC10).