And, Until We Meet Again, May God Hold You in the Hollow of His Hand :)

Sunday was bittersweet because we knew the fun would come to an end soon.  We left Killarney for the Blarney Castle and Blarney Stone and when we arrived we headed straight up to the top to kiss the famous stone.  I have been waiting to do this almost my entire life!  I remember my brothers and I looking it up in our ancient encyclopedias and and thinking that it must be really really scary.  The stairs you had to climb were beyond steep (like maybe 4 inches in width!) and they were so vertical that the handrail literally was a rope tied down.  Once at the top, we got really jittery and nervous because of the way you have to go about kissing the stone ( they couldn't have made it easy of course!)  In order to kiss the stone, you sit down backwards and grab the two bars while being held onto by some random irish guy and essentially hang your head off the side of this castle so that you can kiss the famous blarney stone.  If you happened to slip, you would essentially fall to your death!  I went first and luckily I'm still here to tell about it :)  The story is that when you kiss the stone you get the gift of gab (which I already had lol).  Afterwards we were able to walk around and explore the castle, grounds, and village of Blarney.  We picked up a couple loaves of bread, cheese, a 2 liter bottle of sprite, and cadbury chocolate bars to form an impromptu picnic before loading up the bus to head back to Dublin.  On the way back we passed by the field where they filmed the fight scenes from Braveheart.  We got a little nervous on the way back because our flight was due to leave at 8pm (gate closed at 730pm) and we didn't get back to Dublin until about 6:15 (you are supposed to arrive for international flights 2 hours early).  Luckily Amanda, Christina, Marie, and I were able to split a cab straight to the airport and arrive just in time to board the plane.  After arriving back in London we were once again stuck spending the night there because the trains don't run after 930pm (that's when we arrived).  So we spent the evening working on homework, writing postcards, taking pictures, watching a hot dog stand be built (randomly during the night the airport set up a new hotdog vendor right by where we were camped out), and being silly.  At 4:30 am we were able to catch the train out to Grantham and then a taxi to Harlaxton.  I showered, went to breakfast, and then arrived at my first class at 8:30 am.  What a busy weekend!