County Limerick

... Or, the Treaty County, according to Rory.

Today was our last unstructured day, so we opted to relax in the morning and explore Limerick City and County.  Tomorrow, we do the Cliffs of Moher and Irish music/dancing in the evening, and Sunday we head back to Dublin to fly home.

Adare is about 30 minutes south of Limerick City.  Upon arriving, we spent most of our time in the City at King John's Castle, which was a military castle, originally constructed in 1212.

Like the other castles we've been to, this was more than just a walk through.  We started with a very interactive, separate museum, which walked us through the Norman invasion, how Ireland and England became entangled, then how Ireland came to be under English rule  (thanks a lot, Henry VIII), and finally the Irish rebellions.  My takeaways were that it must be a little rough as a country to have had your golden age prior to the late 12th century, when the Normans invaded.  Speaking of rough, I feel like that pretty accurately depicts Ireland over the last 800 years.

Once we had gone through the museum, we walked through areas of the actual castle (mason, mint, armories, etc.).  Again, this was pretty interactive - you could pick up pretty much everything, and there were lots of little movies to share information.  Also, there were some great views.

I have clearly not mastered the art of "selfie" - oh well.

After the castle, we walked around Limerick in search of a late lunch, which ended up being Italian.  It was excellent :)  Since we needed to leave Adare around six for our evening activity, we headed back for a little bit of downtime.

Our evening entertainment was Limerick community theatre.  We went to see Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime, at the Friars Gate Theatre in Kilmallock!  It was SO funny, and very entertaining to watch.   Here's the synopsis:

When a genius commits a murder, the plan is perfect. But is it foolproof? Inspector Drake is 
back to face his greatest-ever challenge. 

Who is the mysterious Doctor Short, and why did he marry a warthog? Has he murdered his fourth wife - or did she murder him first? These are just some of the questions facing the indomitable Drake in this hilarious sequel to Inspector Drake and the Time Machine.

Those were the questions, and we got those (and many, many more) answered.  Definitely a good day :)

County Cork

Or, as Rory called it, the Rebel County.

Today we headed southeast, to Cork County for a day filled with adventures.  Before even getting started, I want to acknowledge Jenn as the day's MVP, for navigating the considerably more constricted urban streets than those found in Adare, which is especially impressive given the wrong-side-of-the-road driving.  Many, many snaps/kudos/other good things to Jenn for that.

First on our list was Blarney Castle.  My expectations were minimal, given the highly tourist-centric nature of kissing the Blarney Stone.  That said, my expectations were vastly exceeded.*

*Not by actually kissing the stone.  That part was ~60 of the most awkward seconds ever (see photographic evidence below).

So that's a thing that happened.  No, my expectations were exceeded by the grounds and the layout of the castle estate.  It was very pretty, and sat at the convergence of two rivers.  We were able to see the castle garden, the poison garden, a pretty-but-weirdly-tiki-themed waterfall/fern garden, and a number of pagan artifacts (which may have actually been representations of pagan artifacts - it's hard to know for sure).  Anyway, we ended up staying for way longer than I thought that we would (at least two and a half hours).  The whole experienced was helped by the fact that it was partially-mostly sunny, and pretty pleasant the whole time we were there. 

After finishing up at Blarney, we headed into Cork City, which is where Jenn demonstrated her extreme driving prowess, in search of the County Gaol (Jail).  We finally found it, but it's pretty clear that maybe spending 10 Euro / day on a GPS wouldn't have been the worst of all ideas (though, I wasn't particularly inclined to buy into any more of their nickel/diming/fees/whatnot, by the time we were done with Dooley's).

As I've come to expect from museums/castles/etc. on this trip, the Gaol was really well set up.  The self-guided tour was thoughtfully done, and the exhibits were well-constructed and fairly interactive.  The inside of the Gaol was also pretty gorgeous (you know, minus the cells).  Would probably be an excellent event space, if that weren't super weird.

Our final stop of the day was to go to the Jameson experience.  Unfortunately, we arrived after the last tour opportunity, but we (Carly and Jenn) were still able to sample some whiskeys and go through the Jameson store.

Since Jenn and Carly sampled whiskeys, I had my first Irish driving experience.  In the rain.  In the dark.  On the wrong side of the road.  For real.  Guys, there are sooooo many rotaries here.  And they all go the wrong freaking way.  Do you know how stupid that is?  I need someone to start writing letters about this.  Dislike.  

... But clearly we survived, and I was mostly navigating rural roads, which are way, way easier than the ones that Jenn navigated in Cork.

Tomorrow, we're staying in County Limerick for our adventures.  Until then!

Ring of Kerry!

Hi All,

My plan for this morning had been to wake up and blog before we get going for the day (we're going to Cork, and nothing is really open before 10:00 AM... pretty much the Irish experience pre-St. Patrick's Day).  So I assumed I had plenty of time.  And then I overslept (which, from a sleep-vacation perspective, was awesome).  So, since we're getting going in a few minutes, here are a bunch of pictures from the Ring of Kerry (shown in reverse chronological order), which I'll go back and add text around tonight.

... Or the next morning.  ANYWAY.   Our Ring of Kerry journey started in a small cafe in Adare, where they have approximately the same color scheme as one that I'm thinking could work for our kitchen at home.  It could especially work if my stated priority hadn't been "I want the kitchen to be lighter."  But maybe that can happen with some really kickin' light fixtures.  The dark gray is more of a slate blue, but I think that would make for very pretty cabinets.  We already have the teal walls and the white accents.

Moving right along, we picked up our small bus at the Adare Heritage site.  Rory was our driver, and there were seven other passengers.  Rory's goal was to take us from Adare to Killarney, where our tour actually started (~ 1 hour).  And he talked the entire way.

Rory's one-sided discussions included:

• His bus driving legacy - he has a second cousin in America who played a bus driver at the very end of "The Town."  This makes total sense, because his grandmother was one of 23 children, his parents were each one of 11 or 12, so I assume that he's related to every Irish person ever.  One of his brothers is also a bus driver, so it's in his blood.  We were pretty sure that he's early in his bus-driving career, as he didn't seem to be allowed to drive the actual bus - just the little one.
• Seemingly every celebrity who has ever visited Ireland.  And every movie they've been in before or after.  And the plot of many of those movies (whether they were related to Ireland or not).
• A description of how the sport of hurling works, why it's a non-professional sport (because people don't get paid to play), and all of the local allegiances/favorite players.

Needless to say, this was hilarious, and at times even, somewhat enlightening.

When we got to Killarney, we had about 45 minutes to walk around before getting on the Ring of Kerry tour bus.  What we seem to have discovered is that March is the month for things to be under construction, or closed for renovation, as much of Killarney was.  We were able to peruse several shops before heading back to the bus, and got a sense of what the center of town looked like.

Our primary tour guide was somewhat less bombastic than Rory, and was probably way closer to actually informative.  Over the next six or seven hours, we did scenic driving with photo stops at the Dingle Peninsula and Killorglin, stopped in Waterville and Sneem, and did a brief hike at Killarney National Park to see the Torc Waterfall.

All along the way, we learned about Irish ancient history (the circle was added to the Irish cross to represent the sun, which was worshiped by the pagan religions when St. Patrick brought Christianity to the island), recent history (the island didn't fully have electricity until 1978, and that was one of the last houses to get it - suckers), local culture (more on sheep marking than I had anticipated would come up), and, again, every celebrity to have ever come to Ireland (Charlie Chaplain's daughter still comes every other year or so - you know, she was here in 2015...).

Rory brought us back to Adare at the end of the tour (listening to classical music this time).  All in all, we had a great day.  I would definitely recommend Paddywagon, and all of their tours seem pretty reasonably priced.

Our first photo stop (I think in Killorglin)

Waterville

Jenn and Charlie

Charlie and Carly

Scenic stop to check out the bay off the Iveragh Peninsula 

My thought is that this is Sneem, but who knows where thoughts come from?

And Killarney National Park - Yay for international women!

Adare and Shannon!

Well good morning!

Day two got off to a (thankfully) slow start, as we all worked our way through jet lag.  My strategy was to go ahead and sleep for ~12 hours, which was tough, but I persevered.

We had planned to do a local hike called the Knockfierna, which was featured on the Adare website.  As we discovered upon arrival at what we believed was the starting point, the next point was nowhere to be found.  After wandering for a bit, we went into the Visitors Center, where we were informed that, despite being featured on the Adare website, the hike actually started roughly 20 minutes away by car.  Because of course it did.  The woman who dashed our hiking hopes was able to provide an alternative, however, and we opted to do the local churches and river walk.

This allowed us to see most of Adare's center, which the website refers to as the Prettiest Village in Ireland.  It is, in fact, very picturesque.

After our rather blustery walk, we stopped at Auntie Leana's for lunch.  The beef stew was the lunch special, and I wasn't going to not get the beef stew special (also delicious, though I may pause on my beef stew-a-day plans to sample some other local delicacies).

We also stopped by the grocery store again to round out our dinner stuff.  I think that it's interesting that our receipts have asterisks by any Irish-made products, and there's a summary line at the bottom that lets us know how much money we spent on local products.

We drove to County Shannon in the afternoon, and went to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.  The idea is that it's a living village (representative of different areas of Ireland in the 19th century) with a restored castle.  The castle itself was damp, cold, and did not undersell in its frequent warnings of uneven and slippery steps/ tight quarters - while I would probably not be interested in living there, it was pretty neat to explore.

The village itself was also very cool.  We didn't see it in actual operation, but most of it was open to walk through.  Lots of farm houses from different areas (rural, mountain, etc.), mills, town shops, etc.  Almost everything smelled really strongly of smoke and peat.

We got back to our Villa around six.  Dinner was vegetarian tikka masala and naan (an Irish-Indian delicacy, obviously) and movie night.

And now we're off to our Ring of Kerry Tour!

Have a great day!

Ireland!

Hey All,

We've made it to Ireland!  Day 1: smashing success.  Here's what we've done so far, with a brief pause for car insurance shenanigans thrown in for good measure.

3/6/2017
8:30 AM - Arrive via Aer Lingus in Dublin
9:00 AM - Pass through Irish customs.  Pro: big ol' stamp, and clearly no interest on the part of the customs officer as to why we might be here, or for how long.  Con: It's like 3 pages away from my other stamps, in a mostly new passport.  Chronology is clearly not an Irish value.
9:20 AM - Arrive at the rental car office.
9:50 AM - Arrive at the rental car office front desk.
10:00 AM - Compete all rental car paperwork, only to get to the actual payment/insurance part, and discover a "problem."

Here's my intervening rant.  We did this trip through Groupon, and our package included six nights at a resort (to be described later), flights out of Boston, and a rental car.  We had already upgraded our rental car to be an automatic.  At no point in this process were we informed of Ireland's bizarre and anti-tourist car rental insurance policies.  Here's the deal.  Apparently, when most credit card companies say that they offer rental car insurance, it's not valid in the Republic of Ireland (either that, or our rental agent was lying to increase revenue... I could go either way on this).  Anyway, two phone calls later, I was able to determine that my AA Advantage Card, which was the one we booked the trip on, does carry actual worldwide rental insurance (which is awesome).  Even with that confirmation, and a letter of coverage that the benefits lady was able to email to me, the Republic of Ireland still had to put a 3,000 Euro hold on my credit card for the duration of the trip.  Had my AA Advantage card not had worldwide rental insurance, our options would have been to pay 188 Euro, with a 1,500 Euro hold on my account, or pay 263 Euro, with a 200 Euro hold.

So let's be clear.  Groupon is clearly a budget vacation tool.  In the best, but seemingly rarest of all situations, I have insurance that covers me, so long as I have 3,000 Euro's worth of space on my credit card (I do, but the policy seems like a trap to me).  In most scenarios, you're responsible for paying their (high priced) insurance with a significant hold, or paying an even higher price for their insurance, mostly in lieu of the hold.  And Groupon/Great Value Vacations never saw fit to mention this.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Anyway, we're good.

11:00 AM - Leave (on the left side of the road) the rental car facility.  The guy who helped us to pick up our car gave us excellent directions to get to Adade (~2:15 from Dublin).  We stopped for lunch at at the Irish equivalent of a Maryland House, and got to our Resort around 2:15.  Over that time, it rained approximately 12 times, and was sunny and nice for about the same amount of time.  Interestingly, all semi trucks have big labels on the back, identifying them as "Long Vehicles."  Jenn is a left-side-of-the-road-driving Champ.

2:15 - Arrived at what we were pretty sure was our resort.  It was, but the resort is being completely renovated, which in construction lingo, means razed to the ground.  This made navigation a little tricky, but we're well on our way to mastering the many "temporary roads" (read: muddy areas through fields) of the resort.  We did know that this was happening though, and are staying in a Villa somewhat away from the construction.

2:30 - Got a description of the resort and available activities (mostly falconry with owls), and located our villa.  It's da bomb.  We each have our own rooms and en suites, plus a sunroom, a huge kitchen, an office, and onsite laundry (which will likely be most useful for the dryer, if the frequent rain episodes keep up).

3:00 - We're all asleep.

4:30 - Planned nap time conclusion.  We're all asleep.

5:00 - We drag ourselves out of nap time in search of food.  First stop: Pat Collin's Pub.  I had traditional Irish Stew, and likely won't be eating anything else for the rest of the trip.  So there.

7:00 - Go grocery shopping, buy American peanut butter, crackers, and Diet Coke.  (Routines are important).

7:45 - Play "Love Letter" which is a quick-ish card game that Trace and Lauren gave us for Christmas a few years ago.  It's a good game, and Carly slaughters us.  We did manage to set plans for tomorrow, which include exploring Adare, doing a hike in the area, and possibly going to the Cliffs of Insanity (Moher).

9:30 - We're all asleep.

Yay! Ireland!