Blarney Castle, the medieval home of the MacCarthy lords of Muskerry, is one of Ireland's best-known castles. Many visitors to Ireland include a trip to the castle in their itinerary, often queuing to kiss the Blarney Stone in hope of acquiring the 'gift of the gab.' Yet, despite the castle's ubiquitous image on postcards and tourist promotional literature, there is little acknowledgment of the building's historical and archaeological significance as a native lordly residence. This book - now available in paperback - brings the castle's architecture to the fore, placing it in the context of an expansive native lordship in late medieval Munster, and showing how changes in the layout and appearance of the building can be attributed to the castle's occupants, who continued to redefine their social standing and cultural identity through the Tudor reconquest and beyond.
From a travel TV Host (Plan Your Escape), travel columnist for the Huffington Post and experienced traveler (100 countries), turn your travel dreams into reality with this acclaimed, groundbreaking, and inspiring how-to travel book. You will learn to safely travel and see more for half the cost for all trips from a weekend getaway to longer vacations and trips with comprehensive planning tools and checklists. You deserve this popular selling book! It makes a great gift that keeps on giving. Former economics professor tells 100's of powerful cost-saving and how-to travel tips revealing proven secrets the travel industry does not want you to know! Learn to get the best deals on airfare, hotels, tours, car rentals, restaurants, cruises, and more. Both experienced and occasional travelers say Plan Your Escape, Secrets of Traveling the World for Less Than the Cost of Living at Home is an inspiring and comprehensive how-to travel book: "It gets people exploring possibilities they never thought of". It shatters common misconceptions about traveling showing you how traveling the world or living somewhere can be safer, easier, and more affordable than you think. This book gives you the practical resources, planning tools & checklists, cost-saving strategies, and tips missing in travel guidebooks.? From experienced travelers who have visited 100 countries, you will learn how to:?? Discover 100's of cost-saving and bargain-finding strategies for all trips, even a weekend getaway, so powerful the authors were able to travel for 2 years for less than $100/day for a couple, which they could never have afforded otherwise Get the best deals on airfare, hotels, cruises, tours, car rentals, restaurants, and more Choose the right destination for you and plan your trip Stay safe minimizing security risks far from home and tips and tools for maintaining a healthy lifestyle Save time and money with hidden secrets - 200 of the best Internet travel websites and apps Fall in love all over again! - how to bring you closer to a partner and how to get a reluctant partner to go travel, also great tips for solo travelers? How-to-pack with comprehensive checklists for women and men - pack light, have more, and still be prepared Reduce stress with step-by-step 5-month trip planning and preparation checklists and action steps Useful travel tips for experienced, occasional, and beginning travelers for any trip or living somewhere for 1-2 weeks or longer like several months Handle money & credit cards, Stay in touch cheaply with friends and family, Pay your bills online, Rent your home, Set up a travel blog, Take photos like a pro, and much more The Dunlaps rented their home and traveled the world for 2 years and are members of the exclusive Travelers' Century Club visiting 100 countries on 6 continents as well as 44 U.S. states. They have done home exchanges, taken 27 cruises on 13 different cruise lines on ships ranging from 10 to 3,000 passengers, and over 100 trips together taking cars, trains, buses, organized tours, and independent travel all over the world. Traveling is their passion! The Dunlaps have met scores of people along their worldwide journeys who asked hundreds of questions. They realized many people dream of taking a travel adventure but felt it would be too expensive with too many unknowns or didn't know the best way to pack or where to begin to make it actually happen. Plan Your Escape combines real-life answers with countless hours of research from travel experts. The experienced traveler will learn at lot. For occasional travelers, they show you how to start out slow, choose the right trip for you, and work up to longer trips or stays. They present ideas about how to get a reluctant partner interested in travel and how to bring you closer together even on a 24/7 basis. Plan Your Escape is the travel-planning guide Americans need.
Visit over forty of Ireland's most beautiful gardens without moving from your armchair with this stunning book, ranging from the grand old demesnes of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy to the intensely personal creations of passionate plantsmen and garden makers. Visitors to Ireland are often surprised at the 'palm trees' that make so many gardens look as if they belong in a holiday postcard. How can such exotics survive on an island that is as far north as the prairies of Canada and the pine forests of Siberia? The answer lies in the tail of the Gulf Stream - the North Atlantic Drift - which wraps around this green land on the western edge of Europe. Its warm and watery embrace bestows the renowned 'soft' climate that allows those palm trees (in fact, New Zealand cordylines) to make their homes here - along with tree ferns from Australia and bananas from Japan. Plants from colder regions, including rhododendrons, primulas and all manner of alpines, are equally happy. So, with a range of plants that runs from the subtropical to the subarctic, and a landscape that varies from gently pastoral to savagely rugged, the aptly named Emerald Isle has some of the most romantic and interesting gardens in the world. The result of a lifetime visiting, considering and writing about gardens in Ireland, and several years of dedicated photography, this is a truly comprehensive exploration of a fascinating subject.
This is the story of a boy's growing up on the Great Blasket, a sparsely inhabited, Gaelic-speaking island off the coast of Ireland. It tells of the simple life of a society that no longer exists, with a humor and poetry refreshingly remote from the modern world that replaced it.
Whether ruined or opulant, castles can fire the imagination. Here is a breathtaking tour of some of Ireland's lesser known castles, accompanied by hundreds of color photos, and true stories of duels, derring-do, and defiance.
Recording the world of plant and animal life and documenting the strange beauty of the natural world have been human passions ever since the first cave paintings. While there are many histories of botanical art featuring beautiful paintings and finished drawings, the artists' preparatory sketches, first impressions, and scribbled notes on paper are rarely seen. But it is often these early attempts that give us real insight into the firsthand experiences and adventures of the botanists, artists, collectors, and explorers behind them. This exquisite visual compendium of botanical sketches by eighty artists from around the world brings these personal and vividly spontaneous records back into the light. Filled with remarkable images from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, sourced from the unparalleled collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Library, Art & Archives, and other libraries, museums, and archives, Botanical Sketchbooks also provides fascinating biographical portraits of the intriguing characters featured within, including such renowned artists, scientists, and amateur botanists as Leonardo da Vinci, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Carl Linnaeus, Maria Sibylla Merian, Mark Catesby, and Helen and Margaret Shelley (sisters of the novelist Mary Shelley), among many others.
Blarney Castle is one of Ireland's most popular attractions, and with new photography of both the castle and grounds, this guide gives a concise overview of the history, as well as the myths and stories that surround the venue. Built nearly six hundred years ago by one of Ireland's greatest chieftans, Cormack MacCarthy, Blarney Castle is one of Ireland's most visited monuments. Every year thousands flock to visit the ancient castle and walk through its delightful gardens - and to kiss the Blarney Stone, the legendary Stone of Eloquence, which sits at the top of the tower. The castle and gardens are steeped in the history of Ireland; they are a place of mystery, magic and storytelling, in the great Irish tradition. This richly illustrated book presents Blarney in all its glory, giving historical context, a comprehensive tour of the castle, manor house and garden, and a taste of the many myths and legends that draw visitors from all over the world to Blarney today. On this virtual journey, stand on the upper ramparts, look down across 60 acres of sprawling parkland, including gardens, avenues, arboretums and waterways, and experience Blarney at its best.
Welcome to Ireland, the land of congeniality, camaraderie, and craic. Visitors may come to Ireland for its rustic charm, emerald hills, heathered crags, and misty seacliffs--or for the festivals, exhibits, musical performances, and rollicking nightlife of its up-and-coming cities--but they stay for the hospitality and friendliness that virtually radiates from the Irish people. Bone up on Irish folklore in Yeats Country, find some peace and quiet along the Kerry Way, or sip on a pint of Guinness and sway to traditional music in a Dublin pub--no matter what kind of trip you choose, you can't go wrong with Let's Go Ireland. Let's Go publishes the world's favorite student travel guides, written entirely by Harvard undergraduates. Armed with pens, notebooks, and a few changes of underwear stuffed in their backpacks, our student researchers go across continents, through time zones, and above expectations to seek out invaluable travel experiences for our readers. Let's Go has been on the road for 50 years and counting: We're on a mission to provide our readers with sharp, fresh coverage packed with socially responsible opportunities to go beyond tourism.
