Rainy Trip to Ireland

Well we decided to head off to Ireland for one last trip before I leave on TDY's in Aug and Sept. We had heard great things about the country from our friends and Jen had been to Dublin last summer while I was deployed and had a great time. So, since we had the 4th of July off, we took an extra day the following Monday and spent 4 days exploring the SW portion of Ireland.

We landed in a tiny airport outside of Killarney and spent most of the first day exploring around that area. The town sits right outside a few lakes (one pictured below), and is interesting but full of tourists and big buses. After a half day there we explored the large park surrounding the lakes and mountains (small ones), driving the Ring of Kerry, and looking for our incredibly out of the way B&B. After almost hitting a van going the opposite direction on a road obviously not made wide enough for 2 cars and coming around a bend to see a random horse hanging out in the middle of the road, we finally found our first place. It was nice and the following day was spent driving up to our second location - Dingle Town in the Dingle peninsula. The driving alone was pretty spectacular, however, it rained nearly the entire time so it was hard to enjoy the great scenery except from the confines of our car or raincoats. Dingle was neat - interesting and eclectic - with lots of oddly fitting people, boisterous Irish singing in pubs at night, and sheep everywhere. We stayed in Dingle for the remaining nights and before we got on the plane we went back to the Killarney Lakes to hike around since we liked the area so much. Overall, it was a great trip!

Here's a few pictures from our time there:



One of the Lakes of Killarney...we hiked around on old trails that have been there for centuries.



A beach on the drive around the Dingle peninsula. As you can see, the clouds were very low, but most of that part of the country has beautiful cliff-type coastline.
This place, in Dingle, is a hardware shop by day, and pub by night. We went in and had a few pints just for posterity. Its funny to see a bunch of people drinking and laughing in a place with light bulbs, nails, caulk, and duct tape next to a bunch of booze.
This last picture was in the Gap of Dunloe, near the Lakes of Killarney. It was a great drive on a winding road between the mountains. We passed roughly 30-40 horse drawn carriages (for tourists) as we found our way through the area.

And that's about it. We'll put some more pictures up from the Ireland trip on our Picasa Web Album, which you can reach by clicking the link to the right of this page.

Cheers!

- Jen and Chris...