It was an early morning today – 6am to wake up and then pack my suitcase to have outside by 6.45. After my late night, I thought I might have difficulty, but that wasn’t the case. I was ready for breakfast at 7 and then the tour left at 8am, heading south.
The drive was through countryside that looked like a patchwork-quilt for most of the north east. The beginning was very much motorways (one was only opened 2 weeks ago and is a toll-road), so the ride was smooth. Later in the day, the main roads were more like country lanes and we were held up quite a bit in a traffic jam caused by a funeral! The dead person must have been very popular because it looked like the whole village had turned up for it.
There were a lot of ‘round-houses’, or ruins thereof, along the road. Apparently they were called 10 Pound houses at one stage, because you could buy them for that much if you built around it, and there were some hotels etc that did integrate these ruins into the building. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a photo of these from the moving bus. This one was between Dublin and our pit-stop in Urlingford.
The next stop was at the Rock of Cashel, which was a castle for various Kings:
We drove through more beautiful countryside, and through Cork, to get to Blarney and its castle.The one where you kiss the Blarney Stone to get the ‘gift of the gab’, otherwise known as eloquence. I didn’t bother going to the top to do this, lying down on my back and standing in line and so forth. Also the final bit of staircase was really tight and people were queued down the stairs. I climbed over the railing to go back down, thanks very much!:
I walked around the town after being told that stuff is much cheaper there than at the Woollen Mills where we were parked. I didn’t buy anything though. I went to the Woollen Mills, since I still had nearly an hour to kill, and the shop there was huge and fantastic, and not very expensive at all! I could’ve happily bought something there if I didn’t think it was a waste of money since I could never wear it back home. Beautiful jumpers and scarves, made of wool and made in Ireland (not China!) for under $100 (about 60 Euro), in lots of different colours and styles…just lovely. But I managed to walk away (albeit slowly) without spending up.
We then drove through the Lee Valley and past Macroom Castle (too slow on the trigger there to get a good shot out the bus window), before heading into Killarney and our hotel, The Malton. The hotel is just wonderful! It’s really classy.
It had started raining a little, but we went on jaunting carts (horse and buggy) to Ross Castle. This was not included in the price of the tour, but cost 14 Euro. It was worth it though – our driver, Billy, was an outrageous flirt and hilarious too. Fortunately for him, there was only one man in our cart, so Billy had a good time chatting us all up. The cart took us through the Killarney National Park, past the church and out to Ross Castle before returning along the road back to the hotel. Unfortunately, my spare camera battery had failed to charge the night before, so I had to resort to my phone camera for these photos:
I grabbed the time I had before dinner to do some washing, since I had done none this trip. Fortunately the room has towel heating, so a good place to dry undies :-). Then it was time for dinner at the hotel. The food is fantastic and included in the tour. The not so nice thing at the hotel is that I’m in a room right near the ‘family fun room’ which was quite busy and loud with screaming kids til about 10pm. And since the room is on the ground floor, it seems a lot of people use the corridor as a thoroughfare. I still managed to sleep fine though!
