Apologies for missing a day, we got into our hotel last night fairly late and we were worn out (sorry Julia’s Madrina)! There was so much to do yesterday and a lot of driving so we figured we would just write it all today (the 11th) in addition to today’s entry. Since we are on the road a lot more now on this part of our tour, we decided to try and change things up a little bit with the entries as well. Instead of writing about everything at the end of the day, we are going to try and write entries throughout the day’s activities while travelling on the coach. So check back on entries for updates throughout the day!

So without further ado, this was our busy day yesterday:

“Our morning started off to a 7:00AM breakfast and bags out time once again served at the hotel. We have officially adjusted to Irish time and got plenty of good sleep for an adventurous day. We all packed into the bus an hour later, and headed out to Kildare to one of the nation’s top stud (horse) breeding facilities for horse racing.
Along the way, we got a nice look into the Irish countryside and all of its beauty. A short bus ride later, we reached the stud breeder and began our tour through the facility. It was extremely beautiful! The ranch was full of stunning scenery and gorgeous gardens as we toured around to different locations learning about breeding of these prized horses. At one point we even got to meet and pet newly born purebred horses, some of which are worth upwards of 120,000€. After the tour, we got the opportunity to explore a Japanese garden that is also on the ranch. The garden walk was created to represent “a path through life” and had some very unique and beautiful scenery.

Our next stop was the city of Kilkenny to learn about the Irish sport of hurling. We were dropped off at a local pub and met with a national championship hurler who gave a passionate presentation about the rules and history of hurling. Hurling is considered the world’s most fast-paced field sport and is not played for profit. Players, even at the professional level, all play because they are passionate about the sport and have all chosen not to have the sport played for profit. Instead, the body that oversees the sport will take all profits made from games and put it back into Ireland’s communities in order to allow any and all children the abilities to participate in the sport without any expenses. We found the presentation to be very interesting as he explained the deep sense of pride that many cities around Ireland have for the sport and the desire of many to represent their county. After the presentation, Julia and I grabbed a quick lunch around the corner at a local café and headed back to the coach.

On our way to the city of Cork (our final destination for the day), we stopped briefly at the Cahir Castle. A unique design, the castle is well known for its battle scarred walls that still to this day have cannonballs lodged into the sides of it. As evening approached, we finally reached our hotel in the port city of Cork where we proceeded to quickly eat dinner and knock out immediately.”

Pictures for this entry will be added soon! There are A LOT of good ones from this day so it will take some time to upload them all.

UPDATE: Ok so since it is a little hard to upload many photos to this blog, for the time being we are going to link an album for each day with photos on there which is easier for us. They will require a password.

Link: http://s1064.photobucket.com/user/rjklug/Day%204/story
Password: ireland