We tried, unsuccessfully, to get to Bantry's Great House before leaving. The gate was locked and it had a sign that said the real way was through town somehow.
Leaving Bantry
Needless to say much of the day was spent driving. But that's not to say it wasn't interesting. Much of southwestern/western Ireland is in a sort of prairie. None of us had known this before. You certainly never see it on postcards. The road out of Bantry lead us north through hills and mountains. We weren't going to make it to Galway, but we were hoping for Limerick at least.
Miles away from Bantry, looking south
Along the winding roads, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we found sheep that had gotten out. The gate was also swung out onto the road so if anyone hadn't been paying attention, they would have clipped it for sure. We stopped and got about 5 of the sheep back in (there were about 4 left out) and closed the gate. I figured that leaving 4 out rather than letting the whole herd out was much better.
Notice the obvious lack of a guard rail.
Oak-lined drive
Sheepies!
Somewhere around Dromgariff we stopped at an outlook spot called Bard's something-or-other. Phil and I got some good pictures there.
This is probably my favorite picture from the whole trip.
It was just outside of Kenmare that we took a wrong turn. Well, it wasn't an actual wrong turn, we just accidently got on the road that completely bypassed Killarney National Park. At the intersection of the N22 near Inch, we got back on the road to Killarney. We were getting hungry and decided to stop for lunch. Unfortunately at this point it was only about 10:30 or 11 by the time we arrived, so not many places were open for lunch. We killed some time in the Killarney Woolen Mills shop and wandered into what we thought was a deli but it turned out it had an entire restaurant attatched to the back. After we ate we slowly made our way back to the car but we found a little ice cream shop that had two special flavors of the month. Irish whiskey and Guinness. Of course we tried both, and the girl in the shop told us that Killarney has a couple of neat things to see, if we had the time (which we didn't).
Killarney
Ice Cream!
The cones were awesome.
We continued north on the N22, N23, N21, and N20 to get to Limerick. I'm not really sure why Phil and Alicia wanted to go to Limerick, other than the fact that it had one of the most direct routes back to Dublin, but it is cool to say we had been to Limerick. Thanks the the guidebook, we learned that there were two major points of interest in Limerick. St. Anne's Cathedral, which was built in 1280, and the castle which was built sometime in the 1400s. We got lost, of course, on our way to the cathedral due to very poorly marked signs. After visiting the cathedral Lauren lead the way to a celtic bookstore she had seen down the street. Of course it was closed for whatever reason, but it would have been great to go in. From the looks of it, every single book was devoted in some way to Ireland, the Celts, myths and lore, and so on. We walked back to the car and attempted to find the castle, but got severely lost in the process. We ended up down by the harbor, a new shopping centre, and back by the way we came. It was a lost cause, and it was growing a bit late so we gave it up.
St. Anne's Cathedral
St. Anne's Cathedral
St. Anne's Cathedral
Since we were in Limerick, the Cliffs of Moher were only about an hour and a half to the west. I tried to get them to go, but ultimately we decided against it. We were on the way to Dublin and not very much more exciting happened until we were on the outskirts.
You know you're in Ireland when...
After driving for three hours straight (on top of the 3ish hours we had spent in the car before Limerick) we were in desperate need of a pit stop. By this time we were all hungry but the only things to eat in the gas station didn't look appealing. After stretching our legs we got back in the car and made the decision, to avoid the M50 and the toll fee, to drive through the center of Dublin and try to find lodging in Howth or Swords or somewhere in the area. Unfortunately, we didn't fully counter in the fact that it was the night before St. Patrick's Day, therefore the entire city was absolutely crawling with tourists and buses and taxis.
We made it through, however we missed an intersection and ended up in the northeast part of Dublin. We were lost for about an hour until, in the complete dark, we came upon a B&B in Baldoyle. It was across the street from some black abyss that we couldn't see what it was... mountainside, farm, ocean.... no clue. Don't ask me how we found it, but it was entirely by chance. The only other business-type place around was a kebab shop right next door. I went in and asked for a price on a room which came to I believe 45 or 50 euro a night per person. I went back to the car and we discussed it. I then asked a couple of guys standing on the street waiting for the bus if there were any hostels in the area and they replied that the closest ones were in Dublin. We ultimately decided that this was better than nothing, and it did come with breakfast in the morning. When we got back in to talk to the guy he said he realized that he only had double rooms left and dropped the price to 75 euro per room.
He showed us to our rooms which were only accessible by walking outside to the back of the building. He pointed out a small off-license store, which was apparently (and believably) the only place to buy anything to eat. After we got settled in we headed back downstairs to get something to eat. The kebab place looked like it had better food from the outside, but when we got inside we were pretty sure we'd get food poisoning or something worse. So we went back to the pub next door and had dinner, which seemed like it took forever to get there (in all actuality, even though we were hungry, it really did take a long time to get there).
Mine and Lauren's room... most of that stuff is her's. It's like it exploded when we set our bags down.
Lauren and I ventured into the convenience store to get some ice cream before heading up to our room. Walking into the little run-down c-store was like walking into its own city. It was so crowded and there were maybe one or two cars outside. Lauren bought a bottle of Budweiser and a bottle of Heineken. I bought two miniature bottles of Paddy's Irish Whiskey. One for my mom, who collects miniature whiskey bottles, and another one that I had intended to drink, but never got around to and ultimately ended up giving to my dad when I got home.
Nothing much more happened that night, it was around 9 or 10 when we first got there and dinner (due in large part to the waiting time) took a long while, and we decided we should rest up for the big day ahead of us.
Lauren was in the shower when our drunk Danish (or Finnish or Swedish... whatever) neighbors got back to their rooms. They were loud and pretty interesting to listen to. I'm pretty sure one fell down right outside our door (which we later found out never locked properly). I told her about them when she got out of the shower but after about two minutes I needn't have bothered. They came back out into the hall for whatever reason. After my shower I went to sleep to the sounds of drunk Scandanavians, next to an abyss, in the middle of nowhere on a bed that was concaved around my body. This was definitely turning out to be a great trip. Little did we know how great it was about to get.
