Monday May 30th, 2011: Rock of Cashel, Cahir Castle and "The Test"

Off we headed to Blarney Castle via Mallow. Unfortunately here is where the day takes a turn for the worse. We hit a stone or something and had a blow out. We pulled over to change the tire. Only we couldn’t get the tire off. Fortunately we stopped out side a home. While I was on the phone with Dollar getting a "mechanics tip: kick one side then the opposite, repeat until wheel loosens"- Adam got the wheel off. Unfortunately then the battery died, so we had to wait longer for the battery to charge. Margret’s husband (whose name I never got) eventually got jumper cables to jump us. Then we hurried into town to buy a new tire before 6 pm. We did make it so all was well. The kids were tremendously well behaved. Even Adam and I handled the situation well.



Just outside the tire shop in Mallow



Needless to say we never made it to Blarney Stone. So you will all have to live with the gift of gab that was blessed with and not the extra special kind you get after kissing the stone.
We made it to our hotel by 7:30 and then walked into Killarney for dinner. It was a good evening, especially not being in the car any longer

Rainbow in Kilarney

Kilarney

4th tooth wiggled free in Kilarney

What a day. Ireland seems to be testing us. I should probably have paid more attention to my Saints and prayed to St. Patrick a little more before today.

We started with The Rock of Cashel. It was a church on top of a lime stone hill/rock. Locals say that the devil was chasing St. Patrick over the hills but couldn’t catch him so he took a bite out of another mountain and spit it at him- creating the Rock. Of course the mountain the Devil bit was sandstone and the Rock is Lime Stone. So the locals say that the Devil’s venom made the stone change to lime stone. Hehe. In any case St. Patrick is reported to have preached here and converted a king. While preaching St. Patrick lifted his staff in the air and brought it down with such force that it punctured the King’s foot. The king never said a word. When asked why, he said it was part of the conversation to Catholism. Of course this “conversion” scared the locals so none of them wanted to be converted. It was a beautiful ruins.

Next stop was Cahir Castle. Also owned by the Butler family. It was turned over to the state in 1964. But before that it was updated multiple times. Eventually Cromwell's men destroyed it.

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