Ireland Travel Experience - Part 3

                               Though you can get more information on the history of cork from internet, I will just explain here what the tourist guide explained to us during my second tour to Cork city and Blarney Castle.  Cork which means a "marsh land" was set up as a monastery in the beginning of the 5th to 6th century by St. Finbarr. 

This monastery was built on the hill beside a river. Some cathedrals were also built beside the monastery in the medieval times. The monks will ring the bell and were involved in different activities. They believed creating objects of worship is the real worship in God. Vikings started to arrive in Ireland to trade the objects of worship in monasteries from the monks. They setup trading settlements with local tribes. English in 1100's pushed the vikings out. Both English and Irish markets are present in the Cork city. Along with the history explained by the tourist guide, we reached the city @ 11:50 am. The accent is different in Cork. They used to add a boy/girl at the end of the sentence. E.g: How is it going boy ? Where you want to go girl?

After finishing our lunch in the cork city, we headed to Blarney Castle - one of my favorite castle in Ireland. Those who kiss the Blarney stone in the castle, will gain the eloquence and persuasiveness - in short they will get the gift of the gab. The castle was really unique and I felt like I am there in the same historical time period when the castle was built (600 years ago).All the steps inside were spiral to reach different levels of the castle - courtroom, family room, priest room, kitchen and the blarney stone at the top. 

Though we missed to watch the Blarney house and fern garden there, we were proud that we kissed the blarney stone - hope there is an improvement in the eloquence of my speech now ;) Also we spent some time watching the poison garden, caves etc. Gaelic and Irish languages are spoken in some parts of Ireland with English being spoken the most. The county championship for players is arranged by GAL - Gaelic Athletic Association. We were wrapping up our second tour @ 3:55 pm and headed back to Dublin and reached home by 6:30 to 7 pm.

To be continued ...