Blarney Castle and Waterford

Hello again,

The next day we headed to Waterford and stopped at Blarney Castle along the way.

This is another castle we passed. We literally had to jump off the bus and take a quick picture and jump back on! It was all so fast I never even knew what it was!

Here was our first view of Blarney Castle.

This is where they would hang you over to kiss the Blarney stone, I honestly can't even explain how they did it, all I can say is it was very strange and I wasn't about to kiss something that a million others had!

The ivy actually sparkled, and it wasn't even wet. It looked so magical.

After the castle, we drove on towards Waterford. We passed though some cute towns along the way. Many were right by the sea. It was a rather windy day as you can tell in some of the pictures.

When we got to Waterford, we went right to the Waterford Crystal Factory for a tour. It was rather neat to watch how the pieces are made, and the showroom was sparking with gorgeous things.

This picture is blurry, but I still wanted to use it so you could see him actually making the piece. He would blow into it some and then spin it around and keep doing that over and over till he got it to the right size.

The piece then went into a mold to get it the right shape.

It got shaped, then cut off and put into the kiln for a day I think the guide said.

This shows how they would mark them for cutting.

This man is actually cutting the glass, it was neat to watch.

This shows the difference between the cleaned piece and the dirty one.

We ended our tour back in the showroom. Just look at all the glistening!

This night we stayed at what I would consider the worst of the hotels, so there are no pictures. The next day we were off to cross the Irish sea and spend the night in Wales.

xoxo