Ireland Day 4 - County Cork

Today we started with breakfast at the B&B at 8:00AM.  Breakfast consisted of a fresh omelet with ham, cherry tomatoes, cheese, and mushrooms, Jim didn’t have mushrooms in his, well as fresh scones and tea.  After breakfast we headed up to Blarney Castle.

The drive up to Blarney Castle took about an hour.  Technically according to the tour company, and the voucher they gave us we should have done Blarney Castle tomorrow but that didn’t make sense with our plans.  Thankfully the castle took our voucher a day early.  We toured the castle; it took a bit over 45 minutes to get to the top of the castle. Way longer than it took me last time I visited Ireland back in 2006.  I didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone this time, but Jim kissed it. He was like it took us forever to get to the top, might as well kiss the stone.  The trip down was a lot faster. Then we walked through the poison garden, the stable area, and of course the gift shop.  By that time, it was lunch time.  We ate at the Muskerry Arms Bar. We had sandwiches. They are all about their toasties (i.e., toasted sandwich) here.  Then we walked around the Blarney Woolen Mill briefly.  The place used to be a mill, now it is similar to a department store. Very disappointing.  We are really trying to find a small local wool shop, instead of something that is mass produced. Afterwards we headed back to the B&B briefly. 

Blarney Castle

On the Blarney Castle Grounds

After a brief stop back at the B&B we went over to the Lusitania Museum and Old Head. The Lusitania Museum is housed inside a restored Napoleonic signal tower.  The Museum is either considered one of the first or last places to visit on the Great Atlantic Way.  The view is very nice, we couldn’t go further out onto the peninsula past the golf course to the light house, since the light house was closed.  

Lusitania Memorial

View from Cliffs Old Head

From there we headed to Kinsale for dinner.  We stopped at the visitor center to get some dinner recommendations and pick up some maps. (I like physical maps.)  I can say for Kinsale being the foodie capitol of Ireland the menus outside the restaurants were not very inventive.  When someone tells me they are the foodie capital I’m expecting a variety of cuisine, maybe some fusion dishes, not lots of meat and potatoes. We thought about eating at the only Micheline started restaurant in the area, but they didn’t open till 6:00PM, we didn’t want to wait an hour.   We ended up eating at an Indian place, which was very good.  Afterwards we headed back to the B&B for our last night in the area before heading up to Killarney in the morning.