Engage!

"And then I asked Elizabeth to marry me." Not many days have that tidbit among their myriad adventures, despite the excitement, travel, and variety of the world around us. 

The day began with a long, hot shower and the amazing traditional English breakfast previously described. I gave driving a try on the way to Cahir, and, after a small wrong turn, we ended up at the Swiss chalet, an extra residence built for the royalty of Castle Cahir to do their entertaining on nice summer days.

The place was pretty, and built to be fairly Victorian in style, from the sound of it, with a lot of the "Nature indoors" style of architecture and decoration. Apparently, the place was abandoned for a long time in the early 1900s and was practically destroyed due to neglect. Through donations in the last 30 years, the whole place was renovated and looks fantastic. 

After the Swiss Chalet, we got back on track and stopped off at Cahir castle. Soon realizing that you don't have to pay for parking on Sunday, we headed down over the creek that runs next to the castle, where Eli got to see her first real life swan.

Someone had left a bunch of bread on the bank, and she spent a while coaxing the enormous birds over, till they were almost within reach. 

We headed over the small footbridge to the green below the castle, and circled behind the main courtyard's outer walls. Eli climbed up the outside of the walls, I explored a door in the back of the wall, and we wandered to the various outer parts of the keep.

On the way back from the end of a path, she was frolicking and having so much fun, and I couldn't resist. I had her sit on a bench, I knelt before her, presented her with a ring, and asked her if she'd marry me. 

She said yes!

After a few tears of joy, we hugged, got our picture taken on a bench behind the castle, smooched a bit, then headed into our first real castle experience. 

Cahir Castle was a lot more open and available than the one in Kilkenny, and we explored as many nooks, crannies, towers, and dungeons as possible. Seeing the various sections, walking on parapets, being able to climb up into the lookouts and the dungeon cells was amazing.

Eli also got to sit on a cannon and pretend to shoot it and learned the term "Murder Hole," through which you could drop rocks or boiling oil on unsuspecting attackers.

After a leisurely lunch at an "American Pizza" place that tasted more like naan with cheese and toppings, we headed to the Blarney castle, probably the most famous of the places to which we'll be traveling. We snuck in with 20 minutes to spare before closing, and we had fear that it would be too touristy, but after crossing the main bridge to the castle, we were greeted with an extremely impressive wall, more than 100ft tall. 

Hiking up and around revealed what we felt was the best castle we've seen so far. The inside was run down, graffitied up, broken boarded, and fairly accessible. The tower was built to be easily defended, with dual staircases, arrow slits everywhere, huge halls, high ceilings, and of course at the very top, the Blarney Stone.

The castle was awesome in its height, having almost 5 stories, all on the top of a hill to begin with. The views from each part were amazing, and the views from the very top were even more spectacular.

Capping off the castle were the grounds and a "poison garden" housing some of the most dangerous plants in nature. They had a sign saying "do not smell, touch, or eat any of the plants." It was neat to see all of nature's wrath in one place, but I still felt a little spooked that a sniff in the wrong direction could mean death... Why would you build a place like that? You could tell which plants had the really bad stuff by the cages over them, but some of them were overgrown out of their cages--I can't blame them, who'd want to trim deadly wolfsbane?

After Blarney, we headed to the hotel at Darby O'Gills, got to our room, relaxed for a bit, then headed to the pub downstairs to look at pictures, get on the net, read up on the day, read all the well-wishes from everyone on our engagement, and then to listen to the locals. Apparently Darby O'Gills is a local hangout in Killarney, as there were people there till late in the night, all of whom didn't care about tourism one whit.

So, finally, we're sitting, having a glass of port, listening to men with Irish accents sing country music to a jukebox that seems to have more in common with Texas than Killarney.