Ireland, Day 1 and 2

We (my family and my parents) went to Ireland for a week at the end of October.  I took about a bazillion photos, so I’m going to do the day by day replay of this vacation since it would end up being a 15 page blog post.

We flew from Treviso to Dublin on Ryanair.  In general, I really dislike Ryanair because they nickel and dime you for everything.  You have to pay a bunch for your bags, and if you’re over on the weight at all (you only get 20kg – about 35lbs – per checked bag) they charge you a BUNCH.  But the check-in went smoothly and the flight wasn’t too bad, despite Ben being a bit crabby since it was his naptime.  We grabbed a quick lunch and then started the rental car fiasco…  I had reserved a van online for about $300 prior to us getting to Ireland.  We brought our car-top carrier to get our luggage from the airport to our rental house, but the van I had reserved didn’t have any place to hook it to, and was pretty small so we had to go one size up.  And the real kicker was that we found out our credit card that covers the insurance on rental cars, doesn’t cover rentals in Israel, Jamaica and Ireland.  So, our rental ended up being closer to $1000 than $300, which stunk, but oh well.

We found our rental house, which was located in Whitegate/Lough Derg (pronounced Lock Derg).  The people that owned the house were unreachable, which really annoyed me since we didn’t really know how to turn anything on, or even which house was ours.  But we figured it out.  The house was FREEZING though.  It was that damp cold, which made it worse and we were all wearing our coats and hats in the house it was so cold.  You could practically see your breath.  I was annoyed that they didn’t at least turn on the heat, but they make you pay for all of the gas/electricity you use, so I guess that’s why they hadn’t turned it on.  And I didn’t take any pictures of the outside or inside of the house.  Oops.

The first night I didn’t even get my camera out.  Sometimes it’s kind of nice to not drag around the huge camera and we only went to dinner anyway and then came home.

On Thursday, we headed to southern Ireland to drive the Ring of Kerry.  We stopped for lunch in Adare and had a good (but expensive) lunch at The Blue Door.

From Adare, we headed to Killarney National Park.  We just drove through it on our way to the Ring of Kerry, but it was beautiful and one of the most memorable things I saw on our trip, even though the weather wasn’t the best when we were there.  Just driving around Ireland was gorgeous though.  The fall colors were AMAZING, and even these edited photos don’t really do them justice.

These were all taken in the park.  I jumped out at a little pull off to take some photos and everyone ended up getting out because it was so pretty!

These shots are from Ladies View, which was named after the Queen I think.  It was gorgeous and I can only imagine what it would look like on a sunny day!  They said rainbows were very common in this area, though we didn’t see any.

There are more sheep than people in Ireland, I think.  They were EVERYWHERE, which explains why there was also wool clothing available everywhere.  Apparently they color code their sheep so they know who’s is who’s, which is good since we saw more than one outside the fences.

We drove through Kenmare, which is right on the southern coast of Ireland.  I guess I always thought the cliché “Irish buildings” were just America’s version of them.  Wrong.  They actually look like you see at Epcot and other Irish places in the U.S.  I loved reading all of the names on the buildings.  LOTS of O’____’s and Mc____’s.  It was fun and they were so colorful too!

On our way around the Ring of Kerry, we stopped by Staigue Fort, which is a really old fort kind of out in the middle of no where, and it was surrounded by sheep.  Pretty neat.  I didn’t take many pictures of the whole fort, but I took pictures of my kiddos in it.

We ended up cutting off part of the Ring because it was getting dark and we were hungry.  We stopped in Cahersiveen to eat and by the time we were done eating, it was dark out.  But I got a few more pictures of Ireland’s southern coast before we stopped to eat!