Long Trip part 3-Mind the Mead!

At this point I was starting to realize why it was called the “Long Trip” as we were only halfway through by the time we left for Blarney Castle on Thursday morning. But no time to be tired now, it was time to push on! Blarney Castle is the home of the famous Blarney Stone, which legend has it will grant you the Gift of the Gab if kissed. The power of persuasion was waiting just a short, uncomfortable walk up a flight of castle stairs for all those brave enough to lean, upside-down, at the top of the tower to kiss a rock. While that is undoubtedly the reason to visit the castle and something that I definitely partook in (I am a business major after all, its worth a shot) my favorite part of the Blarney visit was the Poison Garden. Tucked into the back corner of the grounds, the Poison Garden came with a warning label of “Do not touch, eat, or smell anything in the Poison Garden. Thank You.” What an encouraging thought, don’t smell anything in the Poison Garden. Reading descriptions of the mandragora, wolfsbane, yew, cannabis, and various other plants to understand their modern and historical uses really interested me, particularly as during medieval times several of these poisonous plants were used for wild reasons. Mistakenly used as medicine so the sick would not transform into werewolves, wolfsbane only made the sick worse off, and legend held that an uprooted mandragora plant would emit a scream powerful enough to kill, a la Harry Potter. 

The days and events started to run together at this point, but I think the order is generally accurate. We were able to do a lot of sightseeing around picturesque Dingle Peninsula which was incredible. Gently sloping hills, dotted with brightly colored houses, connected the powerful mountains to the raging ocean. It was at this place that I realized those places they use in movies are real. A fiercely calming place, it was interesting to see the balance of serenity and power of the area, and I am unlikely to ever see two such opposing forces coexist in that way again.  

Late that afternoon we were also able to wander around a national park in Killarney and it wasn’t hard to see why this place is so special to the country. A heavily wooded area, it reminded me so strongly of Minnesota. Shaded rocky paths twisted and turned up a steep hill, wrapping around a waterfall and accompanying river, the sound of birds all around us. On our walk up to the mouth of the river there was a break in the trees and several of my friends and I were ripped away from our quest to reach the top, simply to stare at the lake across the way. Floating towards the ledge off the path as moths to a flame, we were rendered speechless at the pure natural beauty. Towering Irish Pines framed the scene more perfectly than any photograph could, the sinking sun danced upon the shimmering face of the lake as a family of duck travelled from one side of the lake to the other. Looking down on this area with a gentle breeze tickling my face it was almost as if the countryside was reassuring me and reminding me that despite being halfway around the world from where I live, I’ll never be too far away from home. After shaking ourselves out of our stupor, we continued to the top of the falls and it was the...high point of the day without a doubt. A stone bridge overlooked the mouth of the river, as well as the funneling point into the falls on the other side, and with a quick slide down a hill it was possible to stand in the river itself, which shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was the first, and on second thought only person to stand in the water. There was something about the rolling up my jeans and standing barefoot in the mouth of a water fall that made me feel like nature is supposed to be interacted with, not merely observed. Rinsing my face and hair off in a river that had just started to pick up speed as it traveled down the sharp rock face, feeling the cool water soothe my aching feet, listening to the river itself, and smelling the freshness of the place put me so at ease, and I’ll never forget how I felt so at peace with the earth at that moment. 

To end the Long Trip, the class did something really touristy. Typically I HATE doing tourist things, I much prefer to live like the locals do, and really experience the country, as opposed to traveling according to a checklist of “things to do and see”, but I have to admit, Bunratty Castle was a lot of fun. Traditional style feasts are held inside the castle, with performers dressed up according to medieval times and speak middle english, we ate with our hands because no one used forks then, listened to ancient Irish songs from long dead poets (The Star of County Down was my favorite-The High Kings have a nice version of it) and we were served honey mead. Honey mead is an ancient recipe that was served to all the high-born people of the castle during that time period and the drink is very sweet, incredibly tasty, and deceptively strong. We were warned to “mind the mead!” because many a student has become quite inebriated not realizing that just because you can’t taste the strength of the drink, doesn’t mean its not going to town on your judgment capabilities. There is also a cool story behind the name honeymoon for newly married couples. Tradition holds that the freshly committed pair would spend the first month, or moon, drinking honey mead all day and all night together alone, hence the term honeymoon. This is a tradition that should have never died out and I move to reinstate it immediately! With a belly full of mead, spare ribs that literally melted off the bone, chicken, and an incredible vegetable soup spirits were high in the castle that night. The desert for the night, a small cheesecake, was called “lovers kiss” due to the practice of two people feeding it to each other, and no one would eat a bite from their own spoon and I was feeling quite friendly that night, and one exchange of the lovers kiss cheesecake turned into two, and three, and four, until finally the last bite was all that remained, and there were no lovers left at the table.  Unbeknownst to me, my professor noticed this, and to great applause I was able to finish my desert in the spirit of its name with him. 

Some quick highlights of the trip! 

Three other male students and I thought it would be great fun to go swimming in the ocean while visiting Inch Beach, and we were mostly right. We spent the next few hours on the bus wet and cold but it was a bonding moment for the men of the trip and made a good memory. 

At a pub in Killarney there was a live band who played covers of Mumford and Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, MGMT, The Lumineers, The Killers, ACDC, and countless others, and not only were they surprisingly good, but invited several of the Americans on stage to dance which I have to say was quite a lot of fun. 

We stopped for lunch after a long day of travel, and too many hours after breakfast, and a few friends and I saw a burger place and became irrationally excited. I hadn’t had a cheeseburger since January. The size of a double whopper and covered in grease this gorgeous creation tasted like George Washington fighting off the Redcoats. 

Long Trip Part 2-AN ACTUAL MONKEY ON MY LITERAL BACK

The next day of the trip was one of my favorites of the week, as we visited Cahir Castle and Fota Wildlife Park, and drove to stay in Blarney for the night. Located on a small island, surrounded by a strong and deep running river, Cahir was the epitome of defense. The upper battlements had arrow and musket slots to return fire, multiple cannons, and the more Murder Holes than really seemed necessary. The staircase inside the castle itself, like many others was built with careful strategy in mind. Each step was a different height, width, and length and twisted extremely tightly up in a clockwise fashion. From this clockwise position knights would be forced to carry their swords in their left hands giving the defending army coming down the stairs the advantage as it was believed that being left-handed was against nature and religion. From the battlements you could see a thick forest and the river to one side, with a bustling Irish town on the other. Cahir castle has been the sight for the taping of several different movies and television shows as well, including Braveheart, Excalibur, and the Tudors. As much as I enjoyed the castle, it would have been much more fun if they had kept all the doors unlocked and let you really get to all the nooks and crannies of the place. Everywhere I turned there was a chain across the stairwell, or a locked door. What’s the point of finding a secret trapdoor if you can’t go through it?! Even at the top of the chained off stairs there was a locked door (not that I’d know that for sure...) and the dungeons were locked, it was quite disappointing indeed. 

The Wildlife Park is definitely one of the highlights of my trip so far. The park was designed as not to have any “obvious barriers” between the visitors and the animals so they would be more easily visible and to allow us to get closer to many of the animals. I was completely unprepared for the animals that I’d be seeing while there, because I didn’t think that the Irish cold would allow for so many exotic animals to live outside in one area. Zebras, Bison, Kangaroos, an incredible variety of species of monkey, giraffes, ducks, cheetahs, you name it they had it! I had never seen most of these animals before and hadn’t ever dreamed that I’d see them in Ireland. I’m still vexed by how they survive in this climate, terribly vexed. One of the first animals we saw were emus, and they are uniquely unsettling birds. Towering above us stepping right up to the electric wire separating us from them, the emus followed us as we walked along the path. Being terrified of birds, I was very nervous to have this large, fast, aggressive one following us. After awhile though it got bored and we continued down the path to the cheetah exhibit, where it was feeding time. 

Watching a cheetah eat was equal parts terrifying, marvelous, and disgusting. There was a motorized yellow wire suspended across the length of the pen, from which they hung dead birds and rabbits from and zip them from one end to the other so the cheetahs would run for their dinner. After a short chase, the leader of the pack jumped high into the air and ripped a small bird off the line and trundled off to sit and eat in peace. The second feeding pitted the beta male against the baby of the family, and it was the single largest dead bird I’ve ever seen dangling from that wire. It looked like the turkey the pilgrims ate on the first Thanksgiving. The little guy had a chance to eat a rabbit, but it got stuck on the wire, and the leader stole it from him. But it ended okay, mostly. He got to eat but never got the thing off the wire, but it sounded like the bird was satisfyingly crunchy so there’s that.

After that awful and amazing experience we continued down the path to the other exhibits. While most of the class had quite a pleasant walk mine was horrifying. Birds. Everywhere. I hate birds. Particularly the ravens that covered the path in black and purple feathers, the a literal murder of them. The fact that they’re called a murder definitely plays into my being scared of them as well. It wasn’t just ravens either. Ducks, pigeons, peacocks, pelicans, just walking around the path! It was madness! Pure lunacy! The worst part was that they weren’t scared of us. They ignored us even. It was awful. I had to put my head down and aggressively charged through the path saying to myself “I’m a big strong man and I’m not afraid of birds! I’m a big strong man and I’m not afraid of birds!!” 

That walk was more than worth it though, because the monkeys were on the other side of....murderers row! A classmate and I saw a group of small black-furred monkeys in a little tree house at about eye level and they were playfully wrestling. The larger monkey threw the smaller one against the wall and bit his neck, and my classmate shouted “oh man he just bit that guy! that’s what’s up!!” and I swear the monkey looked right at us, and smiled. The unquestioned high point of the day was when we passed the lemur fence though. There was roughly 15 lemurs just hanging out right on the side of the path on a wooden fence and they were watching us coming for a long time. Luckily I had a banana in my pocket and I thought I’d see if they were hungry, and they were! I can’t even begin to explain through words how excited I was, THE LEMUS ACTUALLY CLIMBED ME TO GET THE BANANA. I HAD A LITERAL MONKEY ON MY ACTUAL BACK! At one point there were three monkeys climbing my legs and reaching for pieces of the banana and I was just so happy.        

Long Trip Part 1

Last week the class was on the Long Trip, to the South of the country. Ambitiously, I had planned to adventure at every possible moment and squeeze every second of experience I could out of the opportunity. I even came up with a new slogan for week- Manifest Destiny. My friends and I had the solemn responsibility to map the new country we had landed in. I’m not comparing us to Lewis and Clark but we swam in the ocean and conquered a castle so there’s that. 

The first stop was at Birr Castle. The most interesting thing about Birr Castle is that the Birr family still lives inside the main fort, which is kind of cool I suppose if medieval castles are your thing. While we were not allowed into the private residence for obvious reasons we did have the opportunity to explore the grounds. The pride and joy of these grounds is the giant telescope, built in the early 1840’s. It was the largest telescope in the world for 70 years, and still functions today! The rest of the grounds were exactly what you would hope for in a early afternoon stroll. Several calm ponds scattered around were home to a variety of wildlife. Mallards, with forest green masks that blended with the trees and gigantic white swans cleaning their feathers, floated above small fish dancing in the shallows. The sun, peeking through the low hanging boughs of the Irish Pines lit the faces of flowers, which seemed to be everywhere alongside the paths. The only disappointing part of Birr Castle was that the moat was clearly not a priority. Overgrown and dirty, and completely empty I just couldn’t understand why the family didn’t clean it up and turn it into a lazy river to use during the summer, but that’s just me. 

After a few hours there it was time to move on to the Rock of Cashel, a tour that I would have paid all the money I have for Sean Connery narrate the tour for us. Standing atop a hill, the Rock of Cashel was ideally placed in terms of defense. Those would-be-conquering armies would have to march up a steep hill, facing battalions of archers perched on battlements, just to get to a tiny door; only big enough for one very short man to enter at time. Oh, and that door was right under something called a “Murder Hole”, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, its that to be a castle worth its salt you have to have at least one Murder Hole. Exactly what it sounds like, a Murder Hole is a tiny slit in the rocks above, through which the defending army would pour down tar, or boiling fat or water onto the heads of those attempting to enter. 

Rock of Cashel had some really interesting architecture and small deliberate mistakes that I wouldn’t have caught if they had not been pointed out to me. The ceiling in the Great Hall was made to look like the inside of a barrel (there’s a specific term for this but it escapes me) and was constructed to withstand the damp Irish weather. Because of all the rain, and varied temperatures, the wood was curved to allow for flexing and were held together by dowels as opposed to nails. The metal nails would have rusted, and because of the expanding and contracting of the wood, the timber would split and need to be constantly replaced. Because it was curved and held together by dowels the wood was able to move in the wind and absorb and dry out from the rain and hold together. There was also a huge tapestry hanging on the wall on the other side, which had so many more uses than I previously thought a piece of art could have. Made from a heavy fabric it could be used as a blanket for warmth in the dead of night, it also absorbed some sound that bounced off the stone walls, and it was used as entertainment. The tapestry in the castle was a liar, and a very clever one at that. But give it a chance to explain, there are very good reasons for its deception. A deeply religious country, the artists of Ireland believed that only God could create something perfect, and for this reason the artist manipulated the loom as to show the truth of human kind; that they are imperfect and to pretend otherwise is hubris. And if you’re still angry about being lied to, maybe the other reason will help calm your rage. As there are only so many things these people could do before they started to hate the person they were talking to, these mistakes in tapestries provided the good people with a game-spot the liar. Some were obvious, such as only one edge of the picture had a border while the other did not, and the placement of a hound near the King. Canines were seen as nothing more than a dirty beast, used only to help guard the door and would never have been allowed to sit next to royalty. Now that amateur hour was over, the educated people (which there were precious few) would be relied upon to find the last lie of this particular masterpiece. The scene depicted the King of Cashel being presented gifts by a beautiful pale blonde woman, with sharp upward strokes on her eyeliner, and snakes on the bottom of her dress. While we were not told the whole story of this event, the bottom line was that this woman was indeed from Egypt, and therefore would have most certainly had darker hair and skin than the woman depicted for all to enjoy. 

My favorite moment of our visit to Cashel came merely walking from one tower to the next. The remnants of a mighty cross stood, overlooking green fields, rolling hills, and running rivers. Everything the light touched seemed to be within your grasp from this vantage point. Furthermore, according to Irish legend, if you could hug the cross, slipping one arm betwixt the support and the base as the other wrapped around the side and make your fingers meet one another, that person would never suffer another toothache in their natural born life. As I hate toothaches I was all about this business. Despite my initial excitement, there was a creeping doubt in the back of my mind. On one hand, my arms are much longer for my height than they should be but on the other due to the screws in my shoulder I had lost a great deal of range of motion. Determined to protect myself against the nagging pain of teeth I pressed myself against the cross as tightly as I could and, one at a time, wrapped my arms around its base....and boom went the dynamite! My hands touched! And Bob’s my Dad I haven’t had a toothache since that day so the legend must be true! (A common Irish saying for “presto” or “voila” is Bob’s your uncle! But he isn’t my uncle he’s my Dad, and yes I’ve been using that joke quite extensively here.)