Catherine Goes To...: 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.