Blogs from County Kerry, Ireland, Europe - page 36

Wow, what an adventure it has become to get us to our final destination. I was barely able to get any sleep on the long leg of our journey over the Atlantic Ocean and what ever waters we crossed. My geography needs to be brushed up on. We landed in Shannon around 11:30am local time (3:30am PDT). Passing through immigrations was quite easy and I now have another stamp in my passport, yippie!! After grabbing our luggage, and Robert realizing that his suitcases had been damaged in transit, we headed over to the Hertz counter to claim our right hand sided vehicle. They denied my credit card even though I paid it off before we left so I had to use Kara’s card (so sorry darling, but I’ll pay it off when we get back). The ... read more

Just to clarify, we are in the Republic of Ireland (in the south) and not Ireland (the north). To get you more familiar with the country we are exploring, here are some of its claims to fame: U2 (Bloody Sunday has new meaning) Gaelic Language Tristan and Isolde movie Guinness Far and Away movie Celtic crosses (a mix between the early Christian missionaries crosses and the native Celtic circles) Potatoes (and the multiple devastating potato famines) St. Patrick (the superstar missionary credited with converting all of Ireland) 3 leaf clovers-used by St Patrick to explain the Holy Trinity Johnathan "Babyeater" Swift who wrote the satire "A Modest Proposal" Oscar Wilde The Book of Kells (illuminated biblical manuscript made painstakingly by the early monks) The Cranberries (not the edible fruit; the band) ... read more

This post is about Dingle, but I'm going to write about Killarney a little bit since I did spend a night there. I'd heard good things about Killarney, and bad things as well. Most of the bad centered around how over touristed Killarney was, and unfortunately it's totally true. I got to the Railway Hostel, which, unsurprisingly, was located across the street from the rail/bus station. The hostel turned out to be really nice, and I almost had a 6 bed room to myself, but a couple people arrived around 9. The town, however, sucked. It was total tourist hell, and I hated it. This is the first place I've come across where I just wanted to leave. The town was absolutely filled with older American tourists browsing the souvenier shops that were in almost every ... read more

We were up, and ready for another day with Batt. Today the “Ring of Kerry”, and I believe a bit of a longer drive. We left Killarney, and our first stop was on the lake leaving town at Ross Castle. It was an old fortress on the lake bank. I would give you details, but this place was not even in our guide books. Our next stop was Kerry Bog Village. It gave you a taste of the early life in the Irish Peatlands . The little cottages, with thatched roofs were fully furnished as life would be in the 1800's. We traveled on towards Valentia Island , on the tip of the peninsula. We did not have time to take a boat out to the Skellig Islands, But had beautiful weather and were able to ... read more

After our first full Irish breakfast together, (oddly just about the same as our full English & full Scottish breakfast) we were off on our tour of the Dingle Peninsula. Our van was a bit smaller than we had anticipated, so it just made for a cozy day together. Our driver’s name is Bat (short for Bartholomew), and a great guy. Answered all questions, stopped at every whim. We drove up through the highest pass in Ireland (O’Conner pass). We ran into some sheep walking across our tiny little one lane road, so we just pulled over, hopped out, got wet, and took some great photos. We went to Dunberg Fort Dating back to the Iron age, and Gallarus Oratory, Ireland’s oldest Christian Church.(circa.6 th to 9th century) A lot of the area, was Irish (Gaelic) ... read more