Bunratty Folk Castle

Saturday, August 9. We left our Killarney hotel, stopped at the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park (thanks to Mike & Marie Underwood and Sigrid Soini!), and ended the day at our hotel in Galway. Full disclosure: This was the first and perhaps only stop on our tour that disappointed us. 

Things started out promising enough. The castle looks great from the outside. 

The inside, though, has some problems. The current structure is nearly 600 years old, originally built by the MacNamara family. It was intended as a lavish home, one capable of hosting a few hundred people at a time, but never designed to host a few thousand tourists a day. Here are a few of the larger halls and smaller private quarters. 

You can climb all the way up to the roof and the turrets. 

And that is a LONG way up there. 

But eventually you have to go down, and that means going down stairs like this. 

Wait, let's get some people on those stairs so you can see how small and tight they are. 

Now imagine that there are a dozen people at the top of the turret trying to get down, and a dozen more trying to get up, and nobody anywhere directing traffic. Oh, and the stairs don't go straight from the main floor to the top. There are other floors on the way where people are constantly getting off and on, and going up and down. Eventually people just start squeezing past each other to get where they need to be. It was all chaotic and more than a little scary. There's not much in the castle that can burn, but if a fire ever broke out in that place it would take an hour to get everyone out. We didn't even tour the whole castle, at some point we decided that we were done and wanted out. 

The castle is surrounded by a recreation of a medieval village. 

And they have livestock.

Fun with depth of focus! I didn't even mean for this to happen.

Quick! Everyone make a Shrek joke!

They also have a nice garden.

There was a wedding there that day, and this sweet, sweet ride was waiting to take the happy couple away. 

After lunch (thanks to Todd, Cate, & Jenny Reynolds) it was on to our Galway hotel (thanks to Bill Barnwell and Ben & Robin Lesh!) We were tired that night, so dinner was a simple affair at the hotel restaurant (thanks to Rodney Rogers!) It's a good thing we got our rest, we had quite an adventure the next day. 

Ring of Kerry

On Friday, August 8, we left our hotel room in Killarney and embarked on the great scenic drive known as the Ring of Kerry. And it is a great scenic drive. I took 272 pictures on this drive, then went through and picked out the really good shots. That left me with 190 photos. I knew that was still too many, so I made some very tough decisions about what really needed to run and finally selected the 84 you see here. 

Driving in Ireland is a great challenge, and not just because the wheel is on the right-hand side of the car and everyone drives on the left-hand side of the road. Here is a a picture of a fairly common road in Ireland. Note that it's a two-lane road, with one lane in each direction, and a shoulder about 3 inches wide on either side. (That guy actually has a whole page about driving in Ireland, a page to which I completely relate.) What that photo doesn't show is that these roads are frequently used by enormous tour buses and trailer trucks (excuse me, "lorries"), or that the speed limits on these roads tend go to between 80 and 100 kilometers per hour (about 50 to 60 MPH). The locals often drive well over those limits, and if you get one behind you, you can drive for miles before finding a safe place to pull over and let him pass. It's completely insane and very stressful. 

(Quick aside about cars, since we're talking about driving. Because the roads are so small and gas is so expensive—about $8 US per gallon, if I'm doing the conversions right—hatchbacks are the predominant body type. The three most popular brands we saw were Ford and a pair of French brands, Renault and Peugeot. We also saw many German cars—Volkswagens, BMWs, Audis, and Opels—as well as Skodas (from the Czech Republic), Citroens (France), Dacias (Romania) and Fiats (Italy). We saw a handful of Japanese cars, mostly Nissan, but fewer than you'd think, given what's needed from a car in this country. We also saw exactly one Dodge Ram pickup truck, which seemed completely out of place.)

Given all that risk of danger, why did we drive ourselves around instead of taking the many tour buses? Because driving yourself gives you the freedom to move at your own pace and choose your own path. This proved to be very important. 

We left Killarney about 11 a.m. (a little late, hoping that by we could avoid the tour buses by giving them a head start, a plan that succeeded for the most part) and started driving west. It was a beautiful day, and the weather was on our side. One of the great things about Ireland (and there are many) is that you rarely get cloudless skies. Even on bright sunny days, you get white, fluffy clouds drifting by and casting dramatic shadows across the landscape.

The Ring of Kerry is basically a tour of the Iveragh Peninsula. We stopped along the north shore for some photos across Dingle Bay, with the Dingle Peninsula (stop giggling) in the background.

We found a little cafe where you can make your own rockpile statues.

Bridget made a fine one.

And then we continued along the shore, slowly turning south.

The Skellig Islands lie to the west of the Iveragh Peninsula. We didn't want to take a boat tour out to the islands, but we did want to see them, so we stopped by the Skellig Experience Visitor Centre. Ironically, you can't see the Skelligs from there, but the surrounding landscape is still quite gorgeous. The nice lady behind the counter gave us directions to where we could go to see the islands. We're very happy she did.  

The nice lady behind the counter had told us to visit the Skellig cliffs. We found a parking spot and started marching up the hill. There's a bit of livestock in the area.

And so we walked up the hill, thinking that we would find the Skelligs at the end of the path. And we did. And we were completely blown away by the view from up there. 

These are the Skellig Islands. Atop the larger island sits an ancient monastery, built about 900 to 1,400 years ago. Let's think about that for a minute. In the heart of Middle Age Europe, when it was pretty hard to bump into people anyway, these monks crossed the channels to reach the continent's western shore, then went a little farther, boating out to these tiny dots in the sea, cutting 600 steps into the rockface so they could reach the top, and then by hand they built elaborate stone structures so they would have some place to stay. And I thought I was antisocial.

The islands are cool. The cliffs are amazing. 

Here is a picture of Bridget waving at the camera. The photo is a ruse; we really wanted to capture an image of the kid on the edge of the bench, sporting what I can only assume is Ireland's largest afro. I think his pal in the white shirt figured us out.

Turning around, we realized that the scenery behind us was also beautiful.

And here is where our decision to drive ourselves paid off. The Skellig Cliffs are particularly remote, and no tour buses go there, because no tour buses could make the turns needed to get there. We were only able to see this because we had a car. 

The downside of that decision is that we were on our own for directions. Well, not exactly. We had a Garmin to get us around, and though we sometimes wished she had directed us to larger roads, even if it meant a longer drive, if it hadn't been for her we would probably still be roaming around those hills trying to get back to something resembling a motorway. I know this, because after lunch (thanks to Gordon and Debbie Foote!) we attempted to get back to the main road on our own, an experiment that quickly proved foolish. Soon Lady Garmin had us back on the right path, and we headed east towards the villages of Sneem and Kenmare.

Bridget made a friend. (She also took video. I'll get that up soon.) 

Finally we headed north for the final stop of our drive, the Ladies' View in Killarney National Park, so named because when Queen Victoria visited the region in 1905, "her ladies in waiting were said to be dumbfounded by its beauty." 

A century had passed by the time we made our visit, but I might have been even dumbfoundeder than they were. 

I mentioned the shadows that clouds cast on the landscape. The other great thing about clouds is that you get a lot of sunbeams. One of them appeared to be shining right on this lake. This whole display was nearly too much for me to handle. Pictures do not do it justice. So powerful was the majesty that I nearly wept. I'm fairly certain this was the prettiest place I've ever been.

I'm quite certain this is the prettiest woman I've ever seen.

We were very tired by the time we got back to our hotel, so our evening consisted of dinner (thanks to Michelle & Conor Tibke!) and a few drinks at a crowded local bar (thanks to Chip & Shauni Cohron!) As I'm writing this now, we've been home just over 24 hours, and though I can't speak for my wife, I can safely say this was my favorite day of the whole trip. Thank you so much to everyone for making it happen!