Author: ben

We rose early and ate some french toast for breakfast. Luckily we didn’t stay too far from the Cliff of Moher and were able to take a second crack at it. The morning was filled with a crisp blue sky and we were off the earliest we had been since this trip has started. I guess that lazy rainy day did us some good!

We drove south back through “The Burren” and made our way to the cliffs. It was sooo windy!! The shop owners at the cliffs were worried about all of the wind. The views were amazing though. If there ever was a picture of the end of the world, this is it! 700ft of sheer cliff and then ocean waves crashing at the bottom. It doesn’t get any more mind boggling than this.

Only pictures can tell the tale.

After the cliffs we took a scenic route north towards the town of Doolin which is reknown for it’s traditional Irish music. Although we didn’t stay for the music, we simply wanted more views! We drove out to the town’s pier and onto this crazy limestone cliff. It looked like this is where George Lucas got his inspiration for the surface of the first Death Star, you know at the end of A New Hope and he’s flying his X-wing down the trenches. Awesome, I got some photos, of course!

After Doolin we went north again up to Blackhead. It’s another high mountain of just limestone rock. It’s no wonder that there are castles all over this place! So much easy to access building materials. I want to build one. We drove past a group of climber ascending a cliff face.

After this we made a way back up through Galway and on through to Clifden. Apparently there was a pony sale in Clifden because it’s a Bank Holiday weekend and I got stuck driving behind many slow trailers full of ponies. So Clifden was all booked up for the show. We stayed at the Abbey Glen Castle our only castle stay while in Ireland. I’ve got to say that the castle stay itself was a bit disappointing. Not much to tell about it, so I’ll just leave it at that.

We went into Clifden that evening for a meal and a drink and ran into some Americans that were chatty. We had a good time hanging out with these two at a pub filled with live music. Afterwards we called it a night. It was a long day of driving and site seeing.

This day was another rain-out. We drove over to the cliffs, but that was a mistake. We went a few hours drive out of our way to pass by the cliffs and didn’t even bother to stop because we weren’t going to get out of our car in the pouring down rain. There was a lot of localized flooding again this day. Just the other day when we got hit with heavy rain the little town we had stayed in previously Kenmare got flooded. Here are a few articles from it: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/2008/1024/1224715114761_1.html and http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1023/breaking39.html. It’s really sad, it was such a cute little town and we didn’t even take a picture of the streets that we walked in and the next day they were completely flooded.

So after our “cliffs” diversion and lots and lots of rain. We made it into Galway and found our B&B, St. Judes. This was a very cute early 1900’s looking home converted to a B&B. We loved it! Since we got into Galway early on a wet Saturday with nothing to do, we found an Omniplex nearby and went to see Burn After Reading. We both enjoyed the packed showing a little more than our Irish friends. Spent a few minutes after the show debating on seeing another movie because of the weather but decided to leave instead.

We went out to eat near our B&B later that early evening. We got Italian, which had been sadly missed by both of us. The meal was great and we turned in early. We opted for a lazy evening after all of the stressful hydroplaning driving from the day.

Not much, but hey it’s our holiday!!

We both slept well after some yummy pub food and a soccer match in Tralee. Sara wanted the “stripes” to win. Our host Tim was very nice and made us a nice Irish breakfast in the morning. We had to talk to another guest that was very outspoken. He left soon enough.

We headed out of Tralee towards the Dingle Peninsula and filled up on petrol, no spilling on the foot this time. There were breezy blue skies ahead and we were ready to go to some “lookouts” that were marked on our handy road atlas, thanks Roberta! Honestly it’s too amazing to describe. All day long we drove through mountains, ocean views, river valleys, villages, and more. It was so unbelievable. Our pictures probably won’t do it all justice. I think I took over 100 photos today. So don’t expect me to pick out the best just yet.

After we exhausted the Dingle drive, and believe me I didn’t want to leave, we headed back through Tralee and onto to Adare. Adare is a small little town just outside of Limerick. We stopped in at the Coatesland House and were greeted warmly.

After settling in, we went into Adare to check out the town. All of a twenty minute walk and we’ve seen it. We are planning on going into town for grub and hopefully this time some live Irish music at a pub.

It’s predicted to rain and storm all day today and the forecast didn’t disappoint. We drove the Ring of Kerry in torrential rain and wind. We could both see that it would be one of the most breathtaking and beautiful drives in all of Ireland but the weather didn’t like us very much. We, or I did attempt getting out of the car a few times but it really wasn’t worth the soaking I received.

We had major road floodings on our way into Tralee where we are staying tonight. We had to re-route several times. Thank goodness we didn’t get our car stuck or flooded. We heard on local radio that lots of cars were flooded and being abandoned. But we made it into town. We didn’t have good directions on the location of our stay tonight so we stopped into an internet cafe and that’s where I’m writing from.

Update: Here is one of only three photos I took all day. It was only sprinkling at this point. It was still amazingly windy and it was hard not to get a blurry photo. Driving the Ring of Kerry was such a waste of petrol and time.

Google saved our butts again so we are off to find our B&B. Tomorrow we drive the Dingle Peninsula and it should be a better weather day so hopefully we’ll get good pictures to show.

P.S. – from Sara – I’m trying to be a good navigator to Ben, but they don’t name or mark a lot of their roads in small towns. This is what they said on the radio about the flooding: “Yeah, that road up by the rugby club is flooded, and also the one that sort of runs parallel to it.” Well, gee thanks, that helps us Americans a lot.

p.s. – from Ben – Sara is an excellent and very helpful navigator, we wouldn’t be making it around so easily without her! We now know that 3 o’clock is 9 o’clock at roundabouts! Thanks babe you rock!

Updates may be sparse the next few days. We aren’t sure when the next wi-fi B&B will be. Sorry I don’t have pictures these last two times. There will be plenty to come. If you want more updates send a few euros our way and we’ll stop at internet cafes every day. Just kidding.

It’s Thursday but I’m trying to catch you up a bit because we didn’t have internet last night in our B&B. We had free wi-fi in our hotel lobby in Dublin and free wi-fi in both of the first two B&Bs we stayed at. Last night was a cute little place but they didn’t have any.

It was a blue sky day, perfect weather! We stopped just outside of Kinsale at the Charles Fort in the morning. One of the biggest most well preserved star forts in all of Ireland. It was very informative and interesting. The fort ground stretched about 12 acres so there was a lot of exploring to be had. We could see sailboats from the fort in and out of the harbour.

Then we made our way back through Cork and out towards Blarney. We stopped at a shopping center just north of Cork and spent way too much time trying to buy a card reader for my camera and snack food.

Blarney wasn’t far from Cork and we made good time. Blarney was quite empty of tourist so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. It’s one of the biggest tourist traps but we enjoyed the heck out of the place. Sara and I both kissed the Blarney stone unceremoniously.

We had an easy drive into Kenmare which was by far the cutest and easiest tiny little town to drive in. We held out until 8pm to go to a local pub for dinner and live music but the music wasn’t to be found which was a bit of a bummer. But we both had a great meal.

Our room was cozy and we slept well.