Room and Ring

 Sunday September 3, 2023

We are staying at the Killarney Plaza Hotel , one of the nicer hotels on our trip so far.  Our room is great and it overlooks the hotel entry, in the middle of town, in the center of the hustle and bustle, and steps away from the entrance to Killarney National Park.

The Killarney National Park is Ireland's first national park, encompassing 25,000 acres, donated by a wealthy landowner.  We took a jaunty car ride through the park.  A jaunty car is a horse drawn buggy!

Yay! I finally got Jim to go on a carriage ride!

It was a great way to see the park, which has a great network of surfaced paths for walkers, joggers, cyclists and horses! 

It is very wooded in some areas, and has several lakes.  The guide explained that the rhododendron grows wild and is quite invasive, so they are trying to irradicate it!  (The rhododendron bushes looked beautiful to me!)  The park has Ireland's only remaining herd of red deer or Sika, and we actually saw one! 

After the jaunty ride, we loaded on the bus headed for lunch in Kinmare.   PJ did an amazing job keeping the bus between the lines, and between the cars!  This is a picture through the bus windshield as we drove through town.  We were hoping nobody opened a car door!

Jim found a seat while waiting for the group to get to the pub.  The sign says "The Happy to Chat Bench...sit here if you don't mind someone stopping to say Hello"

After a yummy lunch (and a Guinness) we began the drive along the Ring of Kerry.  The Ring of Kerry is a famous scenic route on the Island with squiggly winding narrow roads and beautiful scenes along the way. 

We stopped at Ladies View, a panoramic viewpoint where you can see the Lakes of Killarney...a real "WOW" moment!

This is a view across the Black Valley, and you can see the Gap of Dunloe in the distance, a pass that was carved between the mountains by a glacial breach. It is one of the only ways to get across the mountains.  Black Valley was named because it was the last place in the area to get power!

Check out this view from the bus windshield of the tunnel we had to go through.  Thank you PJ for making it through safely!

After a nap at the hotel, we ventured out and thought we'd found a football game on tv!  It was an outside bar, with noisy fans, showing a game on tv but it was the OTHER football--soccer.

We found a quieter outside pub with a little more seating room, and met up with a few others from our group to enjoy a Guinness before dinner.

Before we left Indy, a friend suggested that I buy stock in Guinness--wish I had done it--we are sure helping their revenues!

As the tour winds down we are starting to think about whether everything will fit in our suitcases to come home.  At our last stop we found a charity shop and Jim donated some of his clothes to make room in his suitcase for my purchases!  I also left my hairdryer with one of the desk clerks and asked her to find a good home for it.  Every little bit of room counts!