Waterford, County Waterford, Ireland
We begin our last day in Ireland with a visit to the Blarney
Castle and gardens. While we were on our
way, Cam let us know that when we arrived, we would have two choices of what to
do. We could either kiss the Blarney
Stone, or have a guided tour of the gardens, but he highly recommended that we
take the garden tour because we really don’t want to know what the locals do to
the Blarney Stone in the off season.
Really though, if we wanted to kiss the Blarney Stone, we should
immediately join the line as there are also about a half dozen cruise ships
there and the line gets very long.
Kissing the Blarney Stone involves standing in line for
about an hour, climbing a very narrow spiral staircase to the top of the castle, and then lying on your back,
hanging over the edge, 85 feet in the air, while two people hold your legs to
keep from falling to your death, you bend your back backwards and kiss the
stone opposite. As fun as that sounds,
we opted for the garden tour, and of our group, only Rod was willing to try. He did make it to the top, but couldn’t quite
make his 75 year old back twist enough to kiss the stone.
Instead we opted to tour with Kirstin, one of the 15
gardeners working at the Blarney Gardens to keep the 60 acre garden looking
good. The garden is a mixture of plants
and trees from around the world, including Ireland’s only “Poison Garden” and even
a “Carnivorous Garden” with fly eating plants.
The gardens are laid out with walking paths, waterfalls, covered
trellises, and various sculptures throughout.
Being one of the actual gardeners, Kirstin was very
knowledgeable about the various trees and plants. Evidently the temperature variations in
Ireland between the hottest and coldest days is minimal, and there is lots of
rain, making this area perfect for growing.
The hour we spent with Kirstin was a relaxing walk, which we thoroughly
enjoyed. At the end we were given some
free time to wander about and visit the gift shop. You can’t really visit the inside of Blarney
Castle, so we looked around the outside and headed for the gift shop.
I did find a Blarney Castle t-shirt and magnet, and Jody
found some trinkets for her friends.
Soon we were back on the bus and heading for our last stop in Ireland,
the town of Waterford. Waterford is the
oldest city in Ireland and has about 50,000 people. It was originally founded by the Vikings in
the 10th century. It is an
old world seaport, located on the River Suir, which empties eventually into the
Atlantic Ocean. The oldest building in
the city is Reginald Tower. Replacing an
original tower, built by the Vikings in the 10th century, the
existing tower dates back to the13th century.
But our first stop is at the Waterford Crystal factory for a
factory tour. I always thought Waterford
Crystal was an ancient company, and it is, but only sort of. The original Waterford Crystal, named for the
city, was founded in 1783, but closed in 1851 due to tax policy on luxury
goods.
It wasn’t until after World War
II in 1947, that it was reopened, but with artisans from central Europe, as
there were no skilled Irish artisans.
Since then, the factory has grown, and training was provided for the locals
to bring the company back to its Irish roots.
The tour we had was by a young man called Adrian, and we
were actually able to walk through the actual factory where the crystal is
being made. From raw glass to blowing,
cutting, and etching most Waterford Crystal is made here in this factory by
hand. But there were a couple of cutting
machines that are able to perform some of the simpler and more repetitive
cutting by machine. But realistically,
as an engineer, there must be a way with modern 3D machining tools to automate
more of this operation if they really wanted to,
We did look around the Waterford Crystal gift shop, but they
didn’t have any t-shirts or magnets, just expensive crystal, so it was back on
the bus for us, disappointed and empty handed.
Our next stop was only a few minutes away at the Granville Hotel,
another one of these old time rambling hotels.
The interior was beautiful and our room was surprisingly large. We didn’t have much time to relax in the room
before it was time for our walking tour of Waterford.
We were met by a local named Jack who was a riot. He walked us through the town, pointing out
some of the local landmarks and entertaining us with some of Waterford’s Viking
history and beyond. Meanwhile in the
center square there was some sort of live Rock & Roll music being played on
a small stage. It was a strange
dichotomy between Jack’s Viking history in the foreground and the modern Rock
& Roll music in the background. We
finished our walking tour with a Coke Zero in the local pub before we headed
back to the room for a little rest before dinner.
Tonight was the “farewell dinner”, even though we have a few
more days, mostly because tomorrow’s dinned in Wales is optional and our final
night in London is on our own. It was a
nice dinner, we ended up off on our own at a table for 6 with Lilly &
Peter, Uma & Bhuvana, Jody & I for a delicious dinner and some nice
dinner conversation.
But we need to head back to the room early at around 9:00PM
as we have an early start tomorrow. The
alarm is set for 5:15AM, the earliest yet as we need to be on the road by
6:30AM to take the ferry back across the Irish Sea to Cardiff, Wales.
2025-05-22