Blarney Castle. The Stone is way, way up.
Blow a Kiss to the Blarney Stone
By Janis Turk
Like a cosmic case of jet lag it hits you — that moment in every traveler’s life when you suddenly realize you’re not as young as you used to be. I had this cheerless epiphany while climbing a steep, winding staircase at Blarney Castle: I am no longer a spry adventure girl.
It’s ironic that this revelation came to me during what is called “Positive Ageing Week” in Ireland. A group called Age Action Ireland had scheduled a number of events around this optimistic theme, but I had my own plans — travel in Ireland and France by rail. My itinerary included quiet afternoons in art galleries, leisurely museum tours, time for strolling through parks and palaces, and hours spent gazing from the windows of a train — a schedule quite suited to my own positive-aging pace.
I always thought I would embrace aging — let my hair turn gray without coloring it, celebrate the laugh lines in my face, slow down and enjoy the scenery. And yet, as my turn approaches, I find like most people that I don’t feel any older, and I don’t quite envision myself as such. In fact I’m still surprised to find I’m already “middle-aged,” although sometimes my body feels even older when I travel for weeks on end, sleep on hard hotel mattresses, and walk more miles in one day than most New Yorkers do in a week. I have also noticed some subtle differences in my midlife travel plans: I’m less inclined to sleep in a musty hostel in a Third World country than stay in a quaint European hotel where high tea is served promptly at 5 o’clock each afternoon.
But here, on a drizzly, dark day in Dublin, as I take my tea by a window overlooking the back of Oscar Wilde’s house, I’m as young as I feel, and all the world seems right.
Although I have seen many splendid places, I’ve never before been to Ireland, the home of my ancestors, the land of faeries that played muse to Yeats, Joyce, Wilde, and Synge. I don’t know why I hadn’t visited before. Perhaps when I was younger it hadn’t seemed exotic or foreign enough — after all, they speak English — but now I am ready to appreciate the subtle nuances of places more comfortable and familiar. Over the years, I’ve read Yeats’s poems about the rocky shores, “On Baile’s Strand” and the “Wild Swans at Coole,” and in books I’ve crawled the pubs with James Joyce and sung ballads about “Dublin’s fair city,” so it’s time I make acquaintance with Ireland.
Over the next nine days, it is my goal to see the best of the Emerald Isle by train. With a Eurail two-country pass, I travel throughout Ireland, take a ferry to France, visit Paris, Avignon, and Dijon, and then return to Dublin for the remainder of my trip. Dublin is my base, for almost every city in Ireland is accessible by rail within two or three hours. Day trips are manageable and unrushed: I can leave in the morning and be back by tea time after a glorious day of touring the countryside and seaside villages.
I stay just off the famous Merrion Square at the Hotel Davenport, a lovely, quiet establishment with excellent service and reasonable prices. The lobby offers a cozy, inviting lounge with overstuffed leather sofas and chairs and tables with low lamps. Warm-colored oak paneling gives the room a pleasant, timeless glow. There each day I dine on hearty seafood chowder and celebrate the afternoons with the civilized ritual of tea. There’s nothing like spending a gray, cold afternoon in a warm hotel lobby with dear old Earl Grey. Resting on my china saucer are lemon halves wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with pretty bows, and tasty butter shortbread biscuits.
The Davenport is very close to the National Gallery on Merrion Square, home to the national collection of Irish art and European masterpieces. This, like most all the national museums and galleries in Doublin, is open free to the public seven days a week and is easily accessible for the disabled. (Wheelchairs upon request.) The most highly publicized treasure of the gallery is a Vermeer painting called The Letter, just one among thousands of works by the world’s finest artists.
From there I walk to nearby Trinity College, where the Book of Kells is on display. One of the most famous books in the world, this calfskin manuscript contains transcriptions of the four Gospels. Completed in the Middle Ages, around 800 A.D., its illustrations and ornamentation are beautifully lavish, created by monks from the island of Iona off Scotland. However, the “queue” is long at Trinity College, so I decide to return another day.
Often the best and easiest way to get a good overall understanding of the layout of a city is to take a “hop on and off” double-decker bus tour. For a quite reasonable fare (adult, 14; child under 14 6; student and senior citizen, 12.50) the bus allows us to visit almost any part of Doublin for the next 24 hours.
I am pleased to find a stop just across the street from my hotel. The bus makes touring so much easier and helps seniors avoid exhaustion from so much walking. It’s less expensive than taxis, and the tour also provides a good map of the city with some general background information about sites to visit. Of course, the bus drivers are more carnival barkers than historians, so one is careful to filter all this through a reliable travel guidebook.
I visit the famous Ha’penny (Wellington) Bridge, the lively Temple Bar district, the shopping promenade on South Great Georges Street, Dublin Castle, Christ’s Church, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Stephens Green, and Phoenix Park. I also enjoy the Joyce exhibit at the National Library and the Dublin Writers’ Museum.
Some friends and I also choose to take the Guinness Storehouse Tour. Guinness is one of the biggest names in Dublin because for the past 250 years since Arthur Guiness established it, this brewery at St. James’s Gate has brought jobs and financial gain to the city. The storehouse tour, a loud, clanging, mechanical assault-on-the-senses study in industrialism as art, shows us none of the workings of a brewery and is the least enjoyable part of our visit — except for the “free” pint of Guinness and the breathtaking view of Dublin as seen from the top-floor Oxygen Bar at the end of the tour.
Ireland’s pubs are all magically warm and welcoming, and one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip involves the music and merriment shared by locals and tourists each night after my daily wanderings through Dublin’s cool, wind-swept streets. Singing in the pubs is as important as drinking in the pubs, and surprisingly Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson seem more popular with locals than Danny Boy and Molly Malone.
Early the next morning my friends and I take a taxi from the hotel to a train station, where we settle into a clean, comfortable, luxury railcar. Breakfast is soon served on white linen tablecloths set with heavy cutlery and warm porcelain plates. We dine on hot sausages, potatoes, eggs, and blood pudding, along with brown soda bread served with butter and jam, tea with lemon, and hot coffee with rich cream and colored sugar crystals. Soda bread and potatoes are staples at most every Irish meal.
Outside the train window, green fields dotted with white sheep look as though they belong on a travel poster for Ireland. An occasional thatched-roof cottage, ancient stone hut, or pretty farmhouse comes into view. The train glides smoothly over the tracks as we lean back in our seats and read newspapers while sipping strong coffee.
By the time I get to the sports page with news of the ladies’ hurling match in Dublin, we are already arriving in County Cork where we will spend most of the day. Cork City, in southwest Ireland, has been named the 2005 European Capital of Culture, a well-deserved honor for this little city on the banks of the Lee. Cork is a cultural arts Mecca, and the historic “city centre” bustles with activity in shops, cafes, galleries, music venues, pubs, and open-air markets. Beautiful ancient architecture and narrow streets give tourists a taste of old Ireland, and visits to nearby estates like Fota House and gardens transport us to another time when life seemed more graceful and elegant.
From Cork, we take a five-mile bus ride to the Blarney Castle Estate, where we can “kiss the Blarney Stone.” The grounds are lovely, and the structures there have a history reaching back to the 10th century, although the stony castle that stands today wasn’t completed until 1446.
I am determined to kiss the Blarney Stone, so I do — sort of.
The Blarney Stone is situated seven or eight stories high in the battlements atop the castle, and when climbing long, narrow, stone spiral staircases, some visitors begin to feel claustrophobic. I just feel miserably out of shape. Huffing and puffing, I stop to rest halfway up the tower.
Suddenly, my crippling fear of heights overpowers me as I see how high I’ve climbed. While others enjoy the spectacular views of the lush green Irish countryside and the village of Blarney below, I can only concentrate on the next step before me as I attack another flight of stairs. I become distraught as I realize that young adventure girl is now a middle-aged woman who can hardly manage a steep staircase. I vow to start exercising more.
The Blarney Stone is believed to be half of the Stone of Scone, originally belonging to Scotland, and is said to have special powers. Legend has it that those who kiss the Blarney Stone are given the gift of easy locution — a gift any writer would do well to possess. But I cannot attest to the Stone’s powers, for as I reach the top of the castle I’m not only exhausted — I’m frozen with fear.
As I stand on the high, narrow ledge of the castle, the wind blows my hair across my face. I grip the handrail as I wait in line to approach the Stone, and then my heart sinks when I learn that in order to kiss the Blarney Stone I will have to…
• lie down, flat on my back;
• allow a stranger to hang onto my legs so I won’t fall over the side (they have a man there who does this for a living);
• hang upside down over the edge of the castle — all this just to reach an old, slobber-coated stone.
It’s not going to happen. Instead, I lean as close to the edge as I can and blow a kiss to the Blarney Stone. Feeling ridiculous and woozy, I’m silently humiliated as I quickly make my descent.
After lunch, back on solid ground at the Blarney Woolen Mills, I feel markedly better. So we head to the nearby town of Cobh (pronounced “Cove”) formerly called Queenstown, the port city where RMS Titanic and RMS Lusitania stopped during their final voyages. The village is sparkling like the sea, and with its colorful, steeply terraced houses, certain parts of Cobh remind me of San Francisco.
The next day we take a train to another coastal town, Wexford, where we dine at a place called The Heavens Above on the second story of a marvelous old pub called The Sky & The Ground, while old men sing delightfully and play accordions and penny whistles. We’re the only tourists there, but the locals don’t seem to mind our presence as they enjoy their pints of pleasure. This is the most memorable evening of the trip, though a literary pub-crawl in Dublin takes a close second.
At the Irish Heritage Park one is given a whirlwind expedition through 9,000 years of Irish history to learn how native peoples lived, loved, worked, and worshiped on the Emerald Isle.
Another highlight of the trip is overnight passage on the Normandy, a fully equipped cruise-ship-like vessel that is part of Irish Ferries, which takes you from Rosslare, Ireland, to Cherbourg, France. Comfortable cabins with private baths afford time alone, and the Normandy’s the restaurants, shop, lounge with live music, and movie theater make the evening a real treat. Prices range from 11 (deck only) to 260 (for a four-person suite). Most two-person cabins average from 44 to 88, depending on whether one chooses facilities en suite, and also depending on the season. An added bonus: On some routes travelers are even allowed to bring pets onboard. Best of all, those holding a Eurail pass can currently save 50 percent on the price of the fare on Irish Ferries.
Ireland is a delightful, easy place to visit, and traveling by train and staying in a central location in Dublin makes the trip cost-effective and convenient for senior travelers.
On the last night of my trip, as I sit in the back room of a Dublin pub with softly glowing gaslights and the gentle sway of music all around me, I am lulled into a state of earthly bliss. It is then I begin to realize that, no matter what age I may be, these are the good old days, for I am old enough to feel truly at home in the world. And I find there’s no creaking body part or fearful, aching heart that a pint of Guinness and a soft Irish ballad can’t soothe.
As a merry jig begins, I lift my glass to “Positive Ageing Week in Ireland” and wish the whole world well, for I feel quite lucky to be alive on the Emerald Isle. I may not be a spry adventure girl anymore, but I’ve blown a kiss to the Blarney Stone, and that’s good enough for me.
