Picture it: green grass, blooming flowers, castles, a nice cool drizzle, and lots and lots of potatoes.
Where else could we be other than Ireland?
I loved Ireland. It was actually refreshing to go here after already having been to Italy, Greece, Spain and Morocco. Why? Because they spoke English. Now, I’m all for culture shock and being surrounded by the native language of these other countries, but I’ll be honest…It’s hard. It really is difficult to be American and travel to these other places. You have to tread carefully and make sure you know what to do and what not to do.
In Ireland, it wasn’t like that.
The Irish love Americans. They really do! They’d find out we were from the States and they’d ask us all sorts of questions. Everyone was nice over there and the culture shock was very minimal. For the most part, the entire country is incredibly laid back. They were genuinely glad that we were there. It was a wonderful feeling.
I have a lot of stories to tell about Ireland, but I think I’ll stick to the one place that most everyone knows about this country: Blarney Castle.
Now, I almost did a very, very stupid thing when we went here: I almost didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone.
Yeah, stupid.
And why, might you ask, did I almost not kiss it? Well, there’s a lot of stories about what the locals to do the stone when they’re between “customers.” It’s quite, erm, questionable. I honestly don’t know if it’s true or not, but it is rather disgusting. I wasn’t going to kiss it, I said. Not a chance!
Then I actually thought about it.
I’m. In. Ireland.
When am I going to get to do that again? Probably never. How many other people (that I know) can say they’ve gone to Ireland? How many can say they’ve seen Blarney castle? How many can say that they kissed the Blarney Stone?
That opening is where you lie down and lean back in order to kiss the stone. It's 80 feet from the ground!
I can think of only a handful of people…and those were the ones that were on the trip with me.
I can’t believe I almost made that mistake – almost didn’t go through with something because it seemed silly. It’s just a rock! What’s the big deal? I didn’t need to kiss it to say I’ve “been” to Ireland.
Yes, I did.
Yeah, maybe there are a lot of germs on this Blarney Stone, but come on. Who cares about that? You only get this kind of opportunity once in a lifetime (unless you’re super famous and/or super rich and/or actually live in Ireland…). I am so glad that I did it. It was actually really fun!
View from the archer's window.
And you know what? Officially being blessed as having the gift of gab has got to be a plus if I want to become published, right?
