Finally Catching Up

Bunratty Castle

I've severly been neglecting this blog....but in my defense, I've written about 25 pages for different assignments in the last three weeks and had two presentations. I've kinda wanted to jump off a tall building. Oh, well. I'm going to update on my weekend trip to Bunratty Castle and the Rock of Cashel, the second half of the trip I talked about in the last post. I will also try to update on just how crazy St. Patrick's Day in Dublin was and how the last few weeks here have been later this week, since I'll be off for Easter Break!

Blacksmith's Forge in the Folk Park

Okay, well think back to Sunday, March 10th. It's a strain, I know. Especially if you were like me, and had a little bit too much to drink once or twice between now and then. Our morning started out at around 8 AM, so another early day for me. The bus took us to Bunratty Castle, which is in County Clare. It's not too far from Limerick, but the bus ride still kind of felt like it took forever. First thing off the bus, they ushered us into the Bunratty Folk Park, which was a collection of cottages that had been built to replicate the homes that the peasants would have lived in when the castle was first used. They even had authentic-looking furniture in the homes! Of course, everyone else stopped to look at these. Not me. I made a beeline right for the castle.

You can see just how narrow and twisting the stairs are.

The castle had just opened, and my tour group was the first one there. So, I had the castle all to myself. It was kind of nice not having to dodge other tourists on the narrow spiral staircases. Speaking of which, if I keep having to climb these staircases, I fully expect my thighs and calves to be completely toned by the end of the semester. At least these stairs had a metal handrail the whole way up and down. Blarney Castle's was kind of on and off. Not fun when you're squeezing two people onto those narrow stairs, but I digress.

The Dungeon. (It was railed off)

I entered the castle and headed up the stairs to find myself in the dining hall, where they still host authentic medieval banquets for the tourists. There was a man lighting candles in the hall, and he let me venture into the dungeon, where apparently they still stick two or three tourists during the banquet for "offenses" against the actor that plays the lord of the castle. I was definitely feeling a little bit claustrophobic, and I wasn't even in the main pit! The floor rushes you see at the bottom are authentic straw grown in the Folk Park to be as authentic as possible. It was seriously impressive, but still kinda chilling to think of how real prisoners must have felt.

Dining Hall, complete with antler chandelier

From the dungeon, I continued up another staircase to find the winch where they would raise and lower the drawbridge. They didn't really have the drawbridge anymore, but it was still fun to imagine. There was a door off this staircase that gave an eagle eye view of the dining hall. I imagine this view was probably either a guard position or for important guests like nobility. You can see the opening to the dungeon in the lower left corner. This was probably torture, as the prisoners could smell the food being served in the mess hall. I'm willing to bet they weren't given the same quality of food as the guests...if they were given food at all.

The High Table, complete with the Lord's chair

Directly over the dining hall was the Great Hall, where the lord of the castle would settle disputes between peasants and hold audiences with anyone who wanted to speak to him. I'm not sure if the chair they had set up in the hall was the authentic one used by the original lord, but it's highly unlikely. The room was absolutely humongous, and there were authentic tapestries from the castle on the walls, as can be seen in the picture. In one corner of the room in a window, there was an image inlaid into the stone of the wall that was from the original walls of the castle. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Parapet where I dropped my camera...

From the Great Hall, I headed up to the battlements of the castle for some landscape viewing. This is where tragedy struck. I was not looking at my feet (because I was looking at the amazing views of the countryside) and thus did not pay attention to the small trench that ran along the edge of the parapet. Thus, when my foot dropped into it, I had a minor heart attack and threw my wrist out to catch my balance. Since my camera was in my hand when my wrist struck the edge of the parapet, it bounced right out of my hand and off the side of the castle. Cue the dramatic "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" from me as I watched it fall off the edge of the 15th century castle and onto the street below. If it had landed on the grass, it might have survived. Instead, it bounced off the concrete and was completely destroyed. I had to climb the whole way down the castle and walk around the grounds to find where it hit so that I could retrieve the battery and memory card.

Slightly depressed about my camera, but overall still in a good mood, I took the rest of the pictures in this post on my cell phone, which is why they may look a little weird. After I got the remains of my camera back, I  walked back into the castle and explored some omore of the inside. There were so many different rooms that I can't explain them all, but they were all set up like the inhabitants had just left. They even had a couple of the original garderobes open (though not for use. That would be disgusting.) This is one of the guest apartment bedrooms. The bed would have been considered rather luxurious. Yes, that is a body print in the mattress. Possibly more than one.

Once I was done exploring the castle and the folk park, they shipped us off to the Rock of Cashel. The Rock of Cashel was originally the site of a large manor house, but the lord of the castle gave it and the land it rested on to the Church. They then proceeded to build a large cathedral on the property. This is one of the most beautiful locations I've been to here in Ireland just because it has fallen into ruins. For some reason, it just made everything more special. There were conservation efforts going on to maintain the integrity of the grounds and the structure so that nobody gets hurt, but I'm actually glad to have gone while the cathedral opened up to the sky.

One of my favorite pictures I've taken

When we first got there, it was ridiculously freezing and the winds were enough to blow you off the rock. Luckily, it was possible to find some measure of safety from the elements inside the ruined cathedral. And this is where my breath was taken away. The roof of the cathedral had either collapsed or been blown away, leaving the inside exposed to the elements. Now, this had ruined a lot of the paintings and details on the walls, but I feel like the amount of architecture that was exposed to natural sunlight may have been just as beautiful. Much of the cathdral looks like this, with the tops of the walls sort of crumbling.

Around the outside of the cathedral was a graveyard, with a lot of really antique gravestones marking the passing of their owners. My favorites are those with the celtic cross on top in the background of the picture. I just wish that I had noticed the hose in the bottom left so I could get it out of the picture...
This area was gated off by the conservation crew, and people were trying to get into the main cathedral to see some of the decorative elements they were restoring on the inside of Cormac's Chapel. So I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures here. Inside, however, were some really interesting artifacts from the past.

The first thing I saw when I walked into Cormac's Chapel was a tomb that had been cracked open and cleaned out, so there wasn't anything inside. It would have been interesting to see the original contents, but I guess I'm morbid like that. The sheer detailing on the outside of the tomb was so beautiful. I feel like you could spend hours tracing the intricate knotwork shown on just one side. It was really dark in this room to prevent the growth of organisms on the roof in the other room, so I was glad to catch this bit of sunlight as someone walked in. My cell phone's flash just didn't really cut it.

Once I was done exploring the rooms they were renovating, I ventured back into the cathedral to take some more pictures and try to regain feeling in my hands. Here's another view of the inside of the enormous cathedral. This particular archway is shown in more detail in the picture above, but for some reason, I just kept coming back to this section. A huge piece of the cathedral in the left tophand corner had fallen off and was laying on the ground outside. Of course, this prompted a round of people taking gag pictures of themselves "lifting" the rock. I didn't really desire a picture, but I'm sure you can find them somewhere online.

I continued my exploration of the ruins by heading back inside the reception building, where they had replicas of some of the artifacts they found while excavating the cathedral, including dragons carved into the original castle walls and some Bronze age weapons and tools. Also on display was another tomb, which I presume is also empty. The stone slab on the top is supposedly carved into the relief of the tomb's inhabitant. This sarcophogus was sitting in the back of the museum known as Victor's Hall. It was lying directly beside the original St. Patricks' Cross, which was assumably brought inside to protect it from the elements.

Replica of St. Patrick's Cross

 There was a replica cross placed outside, which is the one I got the clearest picture of. For some reason, a lot of the pictures I took with my cell phone came out really fuzzy.


Well, that was my March 10th. Hopefully, either tomorrow or Saturday I'll write about my adventures in Ireland on St. Paddy's Day. I was in Dublin for the holiday, so you can assume that there were some crazy shenanigans going on.

As always, much love from the land of the leprechauns!

Brooke

Crazy Days

I had the most ridiculously exhausting weekend. For 20 euro, the International Education Division and the International Society managed to keep me competely entertained over the two day period, from the time that I woke up until the time that I stumbled back into my bedroom here in Kilmurry Village. However, I'm only going to tell you about Saturday in this post. Mostly because I don't have most of the pictures from Sunday yet, as they were taken on my cell phone.

So the bus left from the University of Limerick at the ungodly time of 7:30, which meant that I had to be up at 6 in order to get everything ready to go. I was not a happy camper, but I was a hyper one. As the tornadoes ripped through Tennessee this weekend, I was here worrying about my family. Particularily my father, who is a truck driver, as he made his way home. The early hour combined with the lack of sleep to turn me into Miss Talkative, which I'm sure annoyed my roommate Sydney to no end. Once we made it onto the bus and we were on our way, I began to think. I gazed out the window and marveled in the spectacular beauty that is Ireland. Every day, I fall more and more in love with this country. I know deep in my heart that I'm supposed to be here. I could spend every day here for the rest of my life and always find something new to fascinate me. The thought of leaving makes me sad, but I know that if it is right, I will find myself back here in the future. I feel so at peace here, both the land and with myself. I've never felt this way before. After feeling empty for so long, I finally feel like I belong somewhere. It's a great feeling.

The waterfall that the hotel takes its name from.

After that revelation, I finally started to drift off into sleep, only to be woken up when we arrived at our first destination, the Ennistymon Falls Hotel. Here they provided us with some tea (which was fantastic) and raisin scones (which were good once I picked out the raisins) before they made us dance. Yes, we are officially dancing bears. It was difficult to force our feet into the right patterns, but once you got the hang of the steps, you were good. It was a great workout too, which made me really happy that I brought a change of clothes. Once we finished dancing, they stuck us back on the bus and headed off to Lahinch.

As you may remember, Laura, Sydney, Steph and I had already been with to Lahinch with the OPC. Since we had some more time this go around, we ventured away from the sand and the sea to the cliffs in the distance. No matter how many times you see something, the site of such a beautiful place will never fail to take your breath away. Of course, since it rains so freaking much here, the cliffs were kinda muddy. Being the clutz that I am, I of course had to slip in the mud and end up with one leg entirely covered with the brown gook. This made me doubly glad that I packed an extra set of clothes.

After we were done at Lahinch, we all stuffed ourselves back into our coach buses to head back to the hotel, where they plied us with quarter sandwiches, soup, and our dubiously dubbed "yellow drink." None of the people at our table could figure out what it was, but it was delicious. The sandwiches weren't half bad either. Of course, we were one of the few tables who thought so, as almost everyone else still had sandwiches on their plates. Of course, since we couldn't let food go to waste....we brought their plates back to our table where the rest of the sandwiches were quickly devoured. Yes, we are pigs, and we are proud.

The shiny rock in the picture is exposed limestone.

It was then time to get back into the buses and head for the Burren. Which I have also been to before, but we headed to another side. The OPC trip focused mainly on the cliffs, while the International Education department trip headed more inland for a more nature based experience. Each of the four buses got our own guides, who told us more about the history of the area as we drove through. Originally, Ireland was mainly underwater, which left huge deposits of limestone at the bottom of the sea. As time passed and the water receeded, these large fields of limestone were revealed at the Burren, which is the largest collection of limestone rock in the world.  Forgive the quality of the picture, it was taken from a moving bus.

At this point, I was thoroughly exhausted, and kept drifting off. However, I did wake up long enough to take pictures of Mary O'Brien's Castle. We had to take pictures from the bus, which explains the random handicapped sticker floating in the frame. Legend has it that, when her first husband died, she married another man the next day because women weren't allowed to hold land. When she birthed her first male heir, she supposedly pushed her husband off of the roof of the castle in order to be able to control the castle as the proxy for her son. Female empowerment at its most violent.

A bear pit and some remains believed to be 2,000 years old.

The trip took us further into the Burren until we arrived at Aillwee Caves. They were discovered in the 1940's by a local farmer when his dog disappeared. He found the dog at the entrance to the caves, which had been covered for millenia. Remains of brown bears and indentations of their nesting sites were discovered close to the entrance, which is understandably exciting, as brown bears have not been seen in Ireland for nearly 2,000 years. They are a third of a mile long and have some really impressive natural cave formations present, including one that looks like a pair of hands in prayer. There are also several waterfalls in the caves.

Once we were all through the tour of the caves and had done a little frivolous shopping, we headed back into the bus for the remainder of our tour of the Burren. We came across the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb created 4000 years ago as a grave chamber in a cairn of stacked stones. This dolmen is believed to be the oldest set of stacked stones in the world, even older than the more famous Stonehenge. This picture was taken from Wikipedia, as I was too slow to catch a picture of it from the bus. I wish we could have actually seen it this close, but maybe some other time I'll get the opportunity.

Once we were out of the Burren, we headed back to the Falls Hotel and Spa to eat some dinner. I ordered the chicken in a mushroom sauce, and it was absolutely delicious. Honestly, I think I could have eaten two or three more plates, even though I was completely stuffed by the end of the meal. It was that good. Plus, they served ice cream in a waffle bowl for dessert, which was amazing. By the time we were all back in the bus and headed home, I think we were all in a sort of food coma, as it was very quiet. The majority of people slept, but I just couldn't get comfortable. Overall, it was one of the best 5 euro I've ever spent!

Well, that was my Saturday. Sunday was slightly more exciting and a little more tragic. I'll explain that comment in the next post, however. As always, more pictures of this trip are available on my Facebook page, though quite a few of them are mysteriously blurry for some reason.

Best,
Brooke