What started out overcast turned into an absolutely gorgeous day. First up was Killarney National Park, where we hiked (more like walked) the Muckross Lake Loop Trail, a mostly quiet and peaceful trail around, you guessed it, Muckross Lake. We practiced our speed walking technique for the second half of the hike, because someone had a full bladder and the half point bathroom was closed. The Muckross House is a Victorian mansion that can be toured, but we passed that up in favor of driving the Ring of Beara. Before heading out of the park however, took another short hike mostly up to the Torc Waterfall. Judge for yourself, but we were unimpressed. Panting up the path, we asked someone coming down (German I think) if the waterfall was up that way, he said yes, and that it was rather small. Guess we should have turned around then.

Killarney National Park

Into the woods

Muckross House

Fuchsia plants – While not native to Ireland, grow wildly all over

Torc Waterfall

The Ring of Kerry is the well known tourist scenic drive and incredibly crowded with buses and people during the summer months. Ryan and I opted to skip this for the lesser traveled, but supposedly just as scenic, Ring of Beara. We didn’t have time to drive the entire ring and opted to hit some of the sites a few locals had mentioned, driving through Ardgroom, a ‘Tidy Town’ winner wtih very colorful houses, down to Eyeries, across the peninsula to Castletownbere, up to Adrigole, and back across the peninsula over Healy Pass. Tidy Town is an initiative started back in the 1950’s and focuses now on making the towns more environmentally friendly and better places to work and live. Because of it, most towns are very clean and have very colorfully painted houses downtown.

Snack at Derreen Gardens

Near the lake at Derreen Gardens

Drive down the peninsula

Houses in downtown Ardgroom

More scenic views, I think from Castletownbere on the east side of the peninsula.

Sheep lining the hillsides, and sometimes the road, on the drive up to Healy Pass

At the top of Healy Pass.  We came up that narrow windy road.

Scenic picnic spot on the way home.

Ryan far exceeded his step count goal today, logging >26K steps. He brought his FitBit, mostly because it is also his watch, but it has been interesting to see how much we walk each day. With the exception of a slight miss yesterday (<100 steps short of his goal), he has met his goal each day, and the goal keeps increasing.

P.S.  Happy 1st Birthday Nathan!!  Can’t wait to see you in less than a week!

P.P.S. We arrived home yesterday evening and are planning to finish the blog in the next few days to keep a record of our travels.  Ryan made it through Dublin with a slight cold, which got worse on the flights home, but it’s always more comfortable to be sick at home.

The Whispering Pines B&B, our home for 3 nights, was recommended by Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, and Rick Steves, and now we know why. The host Mary and her family are all incredibly welcoming, and it’s more like staying at a relative’s house than in a hotel. Mary runs the place with her daughter Kathleen, and the grandkids are helping out and/or running around during the summer. The breakfasts are all freshly home made and delicious. I had french toast with fruit 3 days in a row, while Ryan tried them all, the full Irish breakfast, french toast, and then scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on the last morning. Mary and Kathleen chatted with us during breakfast. They have a first cousin who’s daughter lives in Austin and wanted to know if we knew her (we did not). They suggested some activities in the area and found us a local GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) football match to attend. Kathleen also recommended a local self service laundry, very necessary since sock supply was running very low.

Walking back to the B&B with our clean laundry, we stopped at a cafe for coffee. I realized that I’ve only been drinking coffee if I can get it with soy milk, which is such a joke considering all the cheese, cream, butter, and eggs I’ve been eating on this trip! Guess it’s just a habit.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around the Dingle Peninsula. Doesn’t the word ‘Dingle’ just sound funny?  We stopped at Inch Strand, a beach that, while much colder in temperature, reminded us a bit of Port A, where everyone drives out and parks on the beach. There were also some crazy people actually out surfing in the water.

We then drove out to Dingle, towards the end of the penninsula, and caught a bit of the local Dingle Regatta races taking place. The drive between Inch Strand and Dingle was incredibly scenic, exactly what I pictured Ireland to be with green rolling hills.

Shared lunch platter in Dingle consisting of fish & chips, seafood chowder, and smoked salmon. Delicious!

The cows photo-bombed my scenic landscape photo

Our time in Dingle was cut short in order to get back to Kenmare for the football match. The drive took a bit longer than expected when traffic was stopped to allow the local cows to cross the street.

We watched a local senior level game between the Kenmare Shamrocks and Kerins O’Rahillys. Gaelic football is a bit of a mix between soccer and rugby. We spent most of the first half trying to figure out the rules, and then a local helped us out the second half filling in the blanks and describing out the scoring worked. The home team won! The field was in the most amazing location, with mountains in the background.

Words to live by, found on the streets of Kenmare

This is our B&B room. Can you find the bathroom? It is through the wardrobe doors!

Another day with a lot of driving! This blog is getting repetitive in that respect. According to GoogleMaps, the drives are not that long. However, it does not appear that GoogleMaps takes into account the windy narrow roads, where one cannot actually drive the posted speed limit, or tractors, sheep, or cows in the road slowing forward progress. More from Ryan on driving later, he plans to write a whole blog post about it.

Nothing beats the convenience of having a car though. First stop, a last minute decision since the route took us right past it, was Dunguaire Castle. It turned out to be another Tower House, interesting in that it had been updated a few times since originally being built in the 1500s. The tower hosts traditional banquets, but I read they were very touristy and envision something like Medieval Times.

We then passed a sign for a chocolate factory up the road, and of course Ryan and I had to stop! It turned out to be a cute place that buys their cocoa beans from around the world including Madagascar, Cuba, Venezuela etc and makes all their chocolates in house. We sampled the Madagascar dark chocolate, which was surprisingly complex, with a description one would expect of a wine.

The Cliffs of Moher was the highlight stop of the day. Similar to Dun Aengus, this is an amazing natural location on the edge of the Atlantic with cliffs dropping straight off into the ocean. The weather was slightly better than the previous day, but still very windy. It is definitely a bit freaky standing on the edge of a cliff with those strong gusts! We did a little off-roading along the trails to get some good views of the cliffs. Unfortunately, we did not see any puffins, the clown birds of Ireland that live in the area. The visitor center at the cliffs was built into the landscape and reminded us a bit of the passage tombs.

Visitor center built into the hill

We finished up at the cliffs just as it was starting to rain, and began the long drive to Kenmare. During a stop at a pub in a small town for lunch, we had the opportunity to watch the Irish O’Donovan brothers earn the silver medal finish in the 2 man lightweight sculls (rowing). This was the first medal for Ireland at the Rio Olympics and the first medal ever in rowing for Ireland. The locals in the bar were ecstatic and it was a lot of fun watching the event with them. We heard about the event over and over on the radio for the rest of the day.

A warm welcome from Mary greeted us at our B&B in Kenmare. We dropped our stuff and walked into town to grab a light dinner, becoming entranced by the 20 km Olympic speed walking event on TV.