The Ring of Kerry

We woke up a little later on Sunday morning, ate a DELICIOUS breakfast with a spot o' tea and headed out to drive the Ring of Kerry.

Another amazing traditional Irish breakfast!

Our first stop was Rossbeigh Beach.  This was an actual beach where people were swimming and surfing!  Kara and I were bundled up in our jackets and scarves freezing our bums off and these people were out in the water!  It was nuts.

After the beach, we drove another hour or so to Cahersiveen for a snack and some lunch for Kara, then across the water to Ballycarbery Castle.  This might have been my favorite stop along the way because these old ruins were so incredibly beautiful and so cinematic.  I feel like we were on the set of Braveheart or...any other beautiful European movie.  Ha.

King of the castle.

After playing around in the castle and climbing rocky stairs and going through narrow passageways, we headed on down the road to the ferry to take us over to Valentia Island.  This island isn't part of the traditional "Ring of Kerry" but our B&B owners told us that many of their clients go there and love it.  We stopped at a Valentia ice cream shop where they make the ice cream on the farm right there, and then headed to the shale quarry, also known as The Grotto, below.  It was basically...a huge, pretty, impressive hole in the side of the mountain, with a statue of the Virgin Mary perched up on top.

Next, we headed over Geokaun Mountain to the Fogher Cliffs.  Evidently this is a miniature version of the Cliffs of Moher and it was stunning.  We were standing on a little tiny ledge over the cliffs and this picture doesn't do it justice!  Just like the rest of these pictures.

More beautiful views that you can hardly see.  But trust me, they're beautiful.

This is a video of a mountainous road and Drew driving.  "Smile!", I tell him, and he replies that he cannot.  You also might not be able to here but at the end of the video, Adele's "Someone Like You" comes on the radio and Drew says "Change it."  After I stop filming, he says "We are NOT going to die on this road with 'Someone Like You' playing in the background!"

By the time we navigated the ridiculously narrow, curving, winding roads and we finally got off the island, it was already late afternoon - and we'd only done half of the actual Ring.  Drew was tense and white-knuckling the steering wheel and I was carsick and Kara was just trying to keep her wits about her with both of us acting like kooks and we decided to try to drive on through, quickly, to Kenmare for dinner.  We missed a couple of forts and churches, and a beautiful house and national park, but we just couldn't handle it anymore.  However, the idea of driving quickly through the Ring was just silly and naive.  We came upon even NARROWER roads, and WINDIER roads, and must have driven through/around/over 10 other mountains before ever reaching civilization.  At the same time though, it was hard to complain too much because the sights and views were so breathtaking.  I'd say "I think I'm gonna throw up- Oooo!  Look over there!  Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?!" all in the same sentence.  It was an odd paradox.  

We FINALLY arrived in Kenmare and had a lovely dinner of Beef and Guinness Pie and Fish and Chips.  

We realllllly needed those drinks.

Upon our return to Friar's Glen, the owner's dog came up and greeted us right at our car door.  I played with her for a long time as I'm feeling dog deprived and any dog I see makes me want to burst into tears cause I miss my Murphy so much.  She was a cutie and loved me.

                          

It was a long day.  And it didn't help that I got food poisoning or lingering car sickness and got sick in the middle of the night.  But I wasn't going to let that ruin things!  We saw some INCREDIBLE views that I'll never forget, Drew did an amazing job of navigating us through the wilds of Ireland back into civilization, Kara was friendly and patient, and it hardly rained at all!  Though it was stressful at times, it was a lovely day and I'm glad we got to see it all!