Last weekend I had a couple of hours free and decided to go to Blarney Castle about a 25-minute bus ride away. The castle is surrounded by well cultivated gardens and paths that almost excuse the €19 student entrance fee. The dungeon was inaccessible for the season due to hibernating bats but main castle built in 1446 was almost entirely visitable. Being a castle, significant effort has been made to be generally inaccessible and exceptionally difficult to siege. Double walls filled with compacted dirt once formed a perimeter, of which only one moderate section remains today. Ceiling holes over main entranceways allow for attacking from above, stabby windows are plentiful, and two steep spiral staircases prevent rapid advancement. Scarce ornamentation from any periods of normal use remain, leaving behind grand openings without wooden floors or ceilings with only fireplace and wide communal poop holes

Although the castle and surrounding poison gardens were plenty cool, the gift shop was equally important. And you bet it was glorious! Chocolates, cashmere scarfs, mugs, jewelry, the over the top stereotypical Irish everything. But best of all was the postcard section where I learned that as part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival about 1200 people posed all in front of the castle in a massive nude photoshoot. And they sell postcards of the event in the gift shop. So you can guess what I got!