South-Western Ireland and the Ring of Kerry: How Mom Became a Driving Champ

We started the day off bright and early yesterday morning and, after a quick breakfast at the hotel (my editors wanted me to tell you that I had my first experience with Irish sausage), we headed west toward Killarney and County Kerry. It took us about an hour to get to Killarney from Cork (with only two wrong turns!). The road was very narrow and it got curvy once we got close to Killarney and into the mountains. We had several moments of panic when mom was caught between getting hit by on-coming traffic on one side or scrapping the side of the mountains (“Rocks! Rocks! Lori, I can handle trees coming in my window but not the mountain!” - Carla).

Our first stop was Killarney National Park. This area is heavily wooded (the largest remaining natural oak forest left in Ireland) and has two lakes, a monastery, a myriad of hiking trails, a waterfall, and a Victorian mansion called Muckross Estate. The best way to see the park is by jarvey, a horse drawn cart, so we hired Dan (the driver) and Molly to show us around. Riding through the woods by horse is a completely different experience than driving. It gives you time to take in scenery and takes less time than walking. Dan was very friendly. He had a lot of information about the park and life in Killarney.  

Muckross Estates is a very old, very large house on the shore of one of the lakes in the park. We didn’t pay for the tour to see the inside, but the gardens are expansive and wonderful to walk through. We discovered a beautiful rock garden that you could walk through on mini hiking trails and some huge old oak trees. We only had a half an hour to spend there, but we probably could have wandered around for a whole afternoon. We got back on our jarvey and took a ride through the rest of the park, including taking a quick hike up to Torc waterfall.  On the ride back to our cars it started to rain, but between our rain jackets and the blankets provided by Dan we stayed warm and fairly dry.

Our next stop on the Ring was Kenmare where we stopped for a couple hours. We had lunch at a nice little restaurant called Purple Heather. Carla and I had some excellent local crab and mom had an omelet. We took a quick walk to a druid circle located near the city. Think Stonehedge but smaller...alot smaller. The history behind the site is interesting, it’s 4,000 years old and is positioned (they think) to match the location of the setting sun on a solstice, but the sight of it was less impressive than we expected. We also spent some time in a store called Quills that sells, among many other things, Irish woolens.

We drove through the next portion of the circle, only stopping for quick pictures of the landscape (they have castle ruins just hanging out on the side of the road here! And the area was gorgeous. At this point we were still in the mountains.) Mom was going pretty slow because the driving was difficult, so a lot of people passed us, but no one made rude gestures at us so they must be used to slow tourists. After a little while we got to the coast. The road started to get a little less curvy and there were TONS of photo opportunities (I forgot how much I love looking at the ocean). There was a stop along the road with a statue of the Virgin Mary. The area was hilly with a view of the ocean, so I took a quick hike up to get a better view, Carla calls it my “walk-about”. We also saw a lot of sheep, some were even grazing on the side of the road! They’re braver than I am...

We made one last stop at a town called Waterville that’s located right on the shore of Ballinskelligs Bay and the ocean for a quick snack at the Bayview Hotel bar. The bar window overlooked the beach and a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who apparently spent his vacations there. We finished the Ring of Kerry in another two hours and drove the rest of the way home to Cork. The total driving time was something like ten hours. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out, so we decided to have a relatively relaxing day around the Cork area. We did a little shopping, visited St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, and got the key for the room I’ll be staying in once classes start. Tomorrow we’re taking the train to Dublin! Updates soon.

Amelia

P.S.  Here's a few more pictures I didn't want to leave out!

I tried to make captions for the pictures but it didn't work so here's what they are from the top down:

Mackross Estates, path in rock garden at Mackross Estates, Me at Torc waterfall, the Druid's Circle, castle ruins on side of road, me by the ocean, path in rock garden, arch in castle ruins, and the Atlantic coast of Ireland.