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Published: February 23rd 2009
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This past weekend Kaelyn, Gabby and myself headed to Killarney for two days and it was sooo beautiful. A lot of it reminded me of home with the lakes and the mountains (well really large hills...sort of like the ones you would see in the Kananaskis area). Even the smell reminded me of home! Killarney is very much a tourist town and they take advanage of that be upping the prices on everything! We went to dinner and I got a Burger with a salad and fries and paid 26 Canadian dollars..... sheesh. But we balanced that price by buying our breakfast and lunch at a place called Centra (a lot like a 7 Elven). There is a lot do to in Killarney and we decided on touring around the National Park both days.
The first day we walked to Ross Castle. It's this old castle and unfortunately we didn't get a chance to learn a lot about it (ill have to google it later) since it was closed for the winter season. But we still got to tour around the castle and the area. The walk to the castle was really nice. Apparently there are a lot of Red Deer
(native to the land) during the spring and summer but we didn't see any on our walk. I can't quite remember but I think it was about a 8km we did in the park. Not too bad and since all we do is mostly walk here it was a piece of cake!
After the caslte we walked through town (the centre of Killarney isn't large at all.. a lot like the size of Banff) and went into some stores....mostly window shopping since that’s all a lot of us can do (not just for money purposes but also for space...i'm already going to have to leave some stuff here when I leave haha.) It's fun to see everything but at the same time sometimes depressing.
After that we headed back to the Hostel and got ready to go for dinner (where we all had the $26 burgers (I would have only paid $10) and then we headed to this concert that was being held at a Hotel. There was this national Irish music/dance/song conference going on and we decided we were going to go to the Traditional Irish music concert. It was pretty sweet and probably the only chance we would
have had to experience that in Ireland so im glad we went. There are about 8 featured singers who sing about 4 traditional Irish songs. By traditional I don't mean Galway Girl or anything but the songs that have being around for hundreds of years and tell stories and tales of the Irish history (political, social, economic etc). The way they sing is also very traditional and many songs were actually sung in Gaelic. The featured singers were really good and there was also a chance for people from the audience to get up and sing a song as well. We wanted Gabby to get up and sing (she has an amazing voice) but she didn’t know any traditional Irish songs.
The next day we headed back to the park but this time we went to Mukross House. Its this old Victorian style house which was owned by this Irish Politician (Henry Herbert) and was later donated to the state. We didn’t go into the house but spent most of the day walking around the area. There is so much to see including the lake, the gardens and the waterfall. This is where it really felt like home (except more
variety of greenery) and it was so nice to just walk through as it was a good (and needed) change from the city! It’s really hard to explain how pretty it was so ill just post the pictures with comments!
After that we caught the 2pm train home (I had a paper and presentation I had to finish for school….darn school always getting in the way haha) but like I said this was a much needed trip as it was soo nice to get away from the city for a but and be in the countryside!
Ohh but I have to say so far, out of all the hostels I’ve stayed in my life, this one was probably the worst. The staff was really nice and helpful but the rooms and the bathrooms were just very uncomfortable. But you never really know what you’re going to expect when you stay in hostels haha!
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