Cork Ireland - The center of the world??

For those of you who don't know, I drove to Newark NJ late Thursday night/early Friday morning and flew to Cork Ireland via London. I am here for a week teaching and then I go to Frankfurt Germany to teach for a week before heading back to NJ for the Laire 4-day. What have I done to prepare for this trip?? Nothing... I almost tried to learn some German but never found the time, I was going to look up cool things to do here in Cork and also never had the time. So, here I am flying by the seat of my pants..

My flight from NJ to London was nice, the plane was mostly empty so I got to lay out in a row of 4 seats (I actually fit laying flat without my feet even hanging off the end of the seats). I slept a little bit on that flight but didn't want to overdo the sleeping because I need to be in this timezone.. Anyway, I hung out in Heathrow airport for a few hours and decided I didn't want to eat there because it's always a hassle to expense stuff in London because of the GBP and VAT. If you've never flown from London to Ireland it should be noted that Aer Lingus has their own little section of Heathrow, there is a bar about half way between the main terminal and the Aer Lingus section and another bar at the gates.. I went through 5 security check points in Heathrow (1 - passport control of plane, 2 - they took a picture of me and gave me a bar code at the 2nd one [didn't know why], 3 - checked bag and had to go through metal detector, 4 - customs with bags, 5 - took my barcode and loaded picture (from 2) on the database to see if it was me)

The flight to Cork was full, the girl next to me made a comment about Ireland being the Center of the World because you can fly from Ireland to almost anywhere in the world in under 10 hours.

When we landed it Cork my first surprise was that the plane lets you on the runway and you have walk to the terminal (it was about 40 degrees and raining HARD), funny side note to that was that my coat was in my checked luggage.. Got to the hotel around midnight, checked in and went to get food.. Well, my decision to not eat in Heathrow ended up being the wrong one, apparently you can't get food in Cork after 10pm unless you consider McDonalds and Burger King food.. Well, after my Buger King bacon double cheeseburger I ended up at a "lap dancing club" for a Guiness before heading back to the hotel for my pushups. (4 hours sleep + long flights + burger king + guiness = really tough pushups)

So, on to today...
I woke up around the crack of noon and went out to check out Cork in the daytime. I decided to walk to the Beamish brewery to do a tour, on the way I stopped at a bagel place and had a multi-seed bagel with bacon, cream cheese, guacamole and tomato and a latte. Got to the brewery to find out they only run tours on Tuesday and Thursdays from 10:30am - noon?! So, where to now? The clouds decided to part so I decided today would be a good day for a double decker tour of Cork, I found a tour that did a run of Cork City and then went to Blarney Castle for a few hours. The tour of Cork was pretty lame really, the only cool things were they have a cathedral with 4 clocks (one on each side of the tower), they it the four faced liar, apparently all 4 clocks have different times and not one of them ever has the correct time!? The other cool thing is that apparently Cork is a shortened Gaelic word that means Marsh. Then the bus went onto a highway and went over to Blarney village, I was on the top of an open air bus, great idea till you hit highway speeds!

Blarney village was a pretty nice little town and the castle was really nice but was really great was the land around the castle. First of all, I did NOT kiss the Blarney stone, I did walk up to it and take a picture, but I did NOT kiss it. I walked around in the castle looking at all the rooms, it was pretty neat to see. When I left the castle I walked around the grounds and came to an ancient tree, the tree felt like one of the warmest places in the world, I went up and sat under the tree and could feel my energies hit overcharge levels. When I walked away I felt all tingley, as I continued my walk around the grounds I found a cave system that went under the castle, they had some small lights in the cave. I went in there and my energy levels and connection to the earth continued to grow, I ended up walking all the way into the cave till I hit a cave in. Went back out and started to leave the castle grounds. I got almost out when I decided to go back to the tree one last time. sat under the tree again for a few minutes and took some rocks from the base of the tree.

I felt like I was floating as I walked back to the mill shops and the bus. Walked around the shops for a bit before the bus left and got some really cool stuff. What I didn't get was a really nice wool cape sorta like this one (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmJsYXJuZXkuY29tL2NhdGFsb2cvZGlzcGxheS9wcm9kdWN0X2RldGFpbHMucGhwP2lkPTYxMDY=), it was a light purple color and would look amazing on my lady folk but the price and size uncertainity scared me away. I did end up spending too much money on other stuff including a really nice greenman necklace (bought that before going to castle) for me.

Back to hotel...
A friend of mine who I used to work with in Hopkinton came and met me for dinner. We went to an Indian place and I got Tandori Quail and some Nan, afterwards we went to a pub for a pint and now I'm back in the hotel typing this up. I think I am going to head back out and see if I can find any live music at one of the local pubs.

I will try to blog more often, I know I said this before but I feel like there are so many people I want to update on my daily occurances and if I did that the phone bills would be out of control..