Guinness, Harp and Smithwicks. What do these beers have in common? They were drunk by me at dinner is the answer! Our day was started late by our terms, 8am breakfast for a 9am departure. We were headed to Blarney to see the castle and kiss the stone (and buy stuff at the gift shop to apparently). We passed some magnificent scenery on the way, they say Ireland is 40 shades of green and they weren't kidding, it was breathtakingly pretty. We arrived in Blarney, paid our €10 and immediately ran into some friends from our previous tour which was a pleasant surprise. We ventured into the castle which was big. It surprisingly small. The staircase was incredibly cramped and steep and there were many steps to get to the Blarney stone. I was all set to kiss the stone but once I got onto the roof of the castle my vertigo (yes I'm scared of heights and prefer to call it vertigo) kicked in so I chickened out, although Sally didn't and now she has a cool picture and I don't. We left from Blarney mid afternoon and arrived at our final destination for the next two nights at Killarney. We had a horse and jaunting car ride before we went to the hotel which was fun and we saw some of the sights like Ross Castle. We are off to do the ring of Kerry tomorrow which will be good. Also there are little green and yellow flags everywhere in Kerry (the county Killarney is in) at the moment as county Kerry has reached the final of the Gaelic football for this year in a weeks or so. It is hard not to get caught up in the excitement of it all, which makes me start to miss footy season back home but I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get excited about Kerry's chances!

Alex