We went back to the Dublin Airport via bus in the morning of September 10th. Our rent-a-car that we pre-booked was to be picked up from the airport, then our plan was to set out to the 3 hour drive to Killarney!
Our ride! We went to pick up our ride from Six T rentals and after waiting a million years for someone to inspect the car scratches, learning that our GPS does't attach, and getting a new GPS, we finally left the airport about 2 hours later at 11:30am (after meeting a friend from California along the way who showed off her BMW). We got an Opal... I never heard of this kind of car before but Aleksy somehow did.
And on route on the drive to Killarney, I had some nerves... opposite side of the car, Aleksy shifting with the shifter on the left... so scary. Aleksy was all like.. "can I have my apple?" and I did not want him to have the eating distraction... but he insisted that he knows how to drive.
Along the way, things got a little more comfortable... so comfortable that we found a Tim Hortons along the Highway! Who knew?? Tim's... in Ireland... at a Barack Obama rest station! We had to give it a whirl and it tasted like a Starbucks Americano... not like a regular Tims from home. Actually coffee everywhere in the UK was really hard to find under the $4 price.
We got to our hotel around 3pm, tried to figure out whee to park, then checked in. It was a little later in the day, so we thought we would do the driving tour that day of the Ring of Kerry. We thought it was a little loop, but it ended up taking around 4 hours! But we saw the most phenomenal views when touring the Ring of Kerry!
Our first stop blew me away. This was the very beginning of the Ring of Kerry... each stop had a name... I don't remember this one, but I remember walking along the path (avoiding he horse shit from the horse drawn carriage that most people were taking) and being so happy and amazed by my surroundings... these mountains, this river, and the valley in between. We walked for a it then headed back to the tour because we had lots left to see along the driving route.
This was just a "scenic lookout" along the Ring of Kerry... so amazing. We spent a good amount of time taking this all in... coastal Ireland was beautiful all over, but this view was particularly mesmerizing. It was a higher point along the mountain that we were driving up (windy, narrow roads that were pretty scary to drive on and kind of reminded us of Chile), which made the view better, but it was sooo windy at this stop... we had to take some of it in while sitting in the car...
We weren't clever enough to grab a map specific to the Ring of Kerry with all the stops and a list of what they are, but we went by the free map that came with the car... of the whole country of Ireland. It actually showed us a bunch of the tourist stops along the way, including this one: This was called the "staige fort", which was around 2000 years old and was built as a safe place for someone with status... It was actually quite tall, and you can see the steps that allowed for us to walk to the top and there were also little caves at the bottom... it was really amazing! And the country that we were looking onto was beautiful... with about 500 sheep in the surroundings... sheep were everywhere in Ireland, particularly around this Ring of Kerry... and they were painted all different colours!
It was beginning to get dark around this time, so we finished up our driving tour and headed back into Killarney for a later supper! Hopign that we could find a good place aroun 8-9pm (because we learned that in some places, you can only get supper from 5-7pm!! Like in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff... a bunch of places!)
Success. We found this place in Killarney, which I was drawn in by their signature "boxties": I think it was like a potato pancake stuffed with chicken, white sauce and veggies.... it was seriously delic. And this green salad on my plate was the first salad I had eaten in like a week and a half... I remember how good it felt to eat those greens. I guess fish & chips is not really a sustainable diet?
After supper, we took a stroll around central Killarney where during the day it was packed with tourists with several seniors and at night there wasn't a soul in sight. I think they all went to bed at 9pm. But.. what we did see was hundreds of high school kids who had just completed (or got the results back?) their testing of some sort... sounded kinda like SATs in the States... they were all out partying and the cops were just watching them drinking... weird.
One of the things that we questioned in Ireland was whether you could just open your beer and walk down the street... there were just so many people doing this. As I wrote this question down... I just googled it... ha! I guess it is legal.
The next morning, we got up early and popped into the grocery store to pack our breakfast and lunch for the day before going to rent our bikes for a day excursion!
We found a good place to rent our bikes from at O'Sullivans then headed out to Killarney National Park to all the main attractions: Muckross House, Muckross Abbey, Ross Castle, and Torch Waterfall.
And along the way to our attractions, we thought there were pretty good views all around... you know like this picture here.... pretty friggin amazing. We also lucked out with sunny, beautiful weather for our day of exploring Killarney by bike!
Our biking excursion started here: after following some girls who took us the wrong way we entered the park to take us to the must-see places.
Our first stop along the way was the the Muckross House. The grounds were gorgeous and the house was old with lots of character and history of plaques around it, but we decided the cost to go inside was not worth our while since we had to be selective with our attractions (for time and money).
This was the torch waterfall. It was lovely. And darn busy (all these touristy places were...). We climbed some rocks for this excellent shot and then about 5 couples copied us afterward... we're kinda brilliant like that. This picture and the waterfall reminds me a lot of some of the Ontario parks with waterfalls that we have seen like Algonquin.
Muckross Abbey: amazing! So full of character and history. I didn't realize when we were approaching it that it was a ruin of what was a church, and also where members of the church resided. I thought it was going to be kinda like the other churches we saw but this was so different. You can see in the picture here that the Abbey was made into a graveyard and there were tombstones even inside the old church. It was huge with several rooms that you could walk through and in the centre, there was a court yard (with a tree!) with an information plaque that gave us an idea of what the rooms were used for. This was seriously cool... I love history like this and best of all touring the place was free and there was information so we could self-tour!
The last stop along our bike tour of Killarney Park was Ross Castle. This castle was different from the others that we saw: it wasn't restored to look structurally put together. It was still somewhere of a ruin. Mind you, Aleksy and I only got a tour of the exterior because to go inside would have costed, and we had run out of time since we were getting close to 1-2pm and we had to drive back to Dublin that day (then take the bus from Dublin airport back to city centre!). It was a busy spot with tourists and like most attractions, plaques so we could educate ourselves about some of the history.
And just before heading back to Killarney town centre to give back our bikes and head back to Dublin, we had some lunch in this awesome spot with the Ross castle behind us and this beautiful view in front! I don't know what it was about these sandwiches, but they were extra delic! Just some meat, cheese and bread we bought at the grocery store in the morning! Another day eating lunch in an unbelievable spot!
After our one night, 2 days in Killarney we headed back to Dublin or the night since we had to leave to catch our ferry for Wales at 6:30am!
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