Student ambassador Jian Yang is back with another blog, this time describing his unforgettable trip to Blarney Castle and Cork city organised by UL!

Hello to everyone, here is to another end of a semester, I hope those reading my blogs have read my previous blogs before. If yes, thank you very much and I hope you enjoy it. If not, I will introduce myself, my name is Jian Yang, and I am from Malaysia. This trip to Blarney Castle was offered at a great discount by the UL Student Life Reception , and it was offered at the early months of the semester. As with all the trips, it starts with gathering in front of the foundation building at 8am to board the bus.

After an hour or so, the bus finally reaches Blarney Castle. My first impression of the place was, wow this place is incredible. Besides being a location of great historical value, the grounds itself is also very vast and filled with many wonderful elements of nature. I usually manage to visit most areas on each trip I go on, but this was the first 1 that I wandered around half of the grounds, which were truly amazing and wonderful.

We had around 3 hours at this location, so I started by visiting the main attraction here, the castle itself and the magical stone it houses. On the outside, the castle looks to be in ruins, but the inside was a maze. There are so many passageways and rooms that I was eager to just see them, but as with all popular attractions, there was a line, and a very long one at that. I Guess everyone wants a kiss the Blarney stone for good luck, and I was one of them. The line brought us inside the castle and the rooms of the original inhabitants.

I continued the tour by visiting the various gardens, farms, and lakes. It was truly a tranquil place to have a walk and admire the natural beauty around, I even visited the witch garden. The place was so huge, I ended up getting a bit lost on my way back to the bus, and I had to rush a bit to avoid getting left behind. But it was a truly wonderful place, and I would like to come back again some time.

Our next destination was Cork city, while it is a big, modern Irish city, there were some landmarks I rushed to see once off the bus. It was around noon when I got to St. Finbarr Cathedral, but it was sadly closed for lunch, and I had to come back later. I went to the English market to have a look, ate my lunch, and went back to the Cathedral. I must mention that there was an admission fee, it was for the maintenance of the church, so I happily paid mine and enjoyed the tour.

The cathedral was very grand both on the outside and on the inside, decorated with various stained windows portraying stories and characters. There were even various artifacts on display that I found fascinating, but the best of all was the center of where the Pope would be. Such a wonderful experience, I recommend it to all to come and visit these places. I went and spent most of my time touring the place and taking some photographs before I left. Oh, I even visited the small labyrinth behind the cathedral, it was very interesting.

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