We woke up early bc the beds weren’t the greatest at the hostel; kind of flat and sad but at least they were clean. The owner made us breakfast. She had quite the choices; sausage, eggs, black pudding, bread, fruit, yogurt, lunch meat, cheese, cereal, tea and coffee. We ate and struck out for Blarney. Our hostess warned us that Cork is on vacation and to avoid the city if at all possible. So we cancelled plans to go to the cathedral and English market in Cork after Blarney and just go to Kinsale. It was good we did because Blarney took a long time. There wasn’t a line exactly, it just took a bit to climb the windy 100 step spiral staircase all the way to the top. The gardens and grounds were expansive and took us 5 hours to wander and look at everything. Then we visited some gift shops and ate (chicken pesto and salmon sandwich with cookie and chocolate cake dessert) at the Blarney Woolen Mills cafe and went to the store. Irish wool sweaters, hats and scarves are very popular here. Also whiskey, lace and of course sheep related things as well.

We drove the hour to Kinsale to our awesome hotel which reminds me of an Italian villa. We checked in and got the low down of Kinsale. He even made a reservation at Fishy Fishy for us for supper. We went to Charles Fort which was built to defend Ireland in the 1600s, then was important as a base for soldiers and defense for Ireland up until the 1900s. Very cool mix of older stone and brick ring fort. We then drove through the tight, narrow town to downtown Kinsale for a delicious supper of shrimp and salmon.

We elected to skip going out tonight for an early bed time and enjoyed the fast, not droppy Internet at our hotel. ? Tomorrow we get breakfast here as well, then off to Killarney.