Southern Ireland

Although a portion of our trip south was a bit rough, I loved Southern Ireland and saw the green, rolling hills and sheep I was hoping to find there!

Day 1, Thursday

This was my worst day of the trip. I admit, my mood was completely foul (and Tonya will attest to that). But, the events of the day didn’t help.

I convinced everyone that getting up early on Thursday for tea would be worth it and it was! The rest of the morning didn’t fare quite so well. We were taken by taxi to Enterprise Rental car services. I had said from the beginning I wouldn’t drive the rental…I was worried about driving a manual after 10 years of not being in one (automatics cost twice as much to rent over there), plus since I don’t drive on a regular basis now, plus the fact that you’re driving on the right side of the car and in the left lane! I thought Tonya was our driver, but when we got there, Sean seemed eager to take the wheel. Well, we didn’t get too far and Sean was having difficulties “hovering to the left”, as Tonya would say. We hovered way too far left and hit a cement pole. I can’t say I would have done any better, though. A tire immediately deflated and we had a slight dent in the car. Sean took everything in stride (I was very impressed that he kept his temper in check) and Tonya and I remained pretty calm, cool, and collected at the time as well. Sean changed the tire (later admitted he’d never done it before), then we were back to Enterprise to switch out cars. And drivers. Sean probably wanted to kill us on that drive back to Enterprise as Tonya and I both probably yelled “you’re hovering” at least 10 times each. I admit, I was freaked out at this point. We got our new car and Tonya took the wheel this time and did great! Getting out of Dublin sucked. The maps are bad and the signs are worse. Actually, the signs are almost non-existent. Tonya later admitted to being nervous at first just being unsure of everything. I refused to sit on the left side this time because if she was “hovering”, I didn’t want to know about it. By the time we found our way out of Dublin, I was completely spent from the tension and from concentrating so hard on the maps and signs. We had a long ways to go.

We drove through so many super cute villages. The countryside was beautiful! The roads were often very tight with lots of curves, making for a slightly scary drive at times. We also experienced many, many roundabouts! We were even stopped by a nice cop (we weren't pulled over...he was standing in the middle of the road stopping everyone). He warned us that we were about to drive on the worst roads we’d ever been on. In his thick Irish accent, he told Tonya that if we came to a rough spot to “pull over and take a tink (took us a few seconds to figure out that translates to “think”) and we’ll get you home safe”! We were also a bit disturbed by the huge signs with red and black lettering that displayed how many people had been killed on the roads in each county. But, Tonya rocked the driving as much as Elizabeth did navigating Santorini. Concentrating on the map and signs throughout the day began to take their toll on me. I felt like it was super-intense concentration all day. Sean helped and we often felt we had to confirm with each other that we were going the right way. We did pretty well without getting lost, but it really was intense navigation!

After much debate, our first stop was in Waterford. We knew we probably didn’t have time to do Waterford and make it to The Blarney Castle before it closed. We decided to attempt to do both. Waterford was an extremely cute town that I would have loved to spend time in, but we just went quickly into the Waterford Crystal store. I got a cute nativity scene and Tonya got a gorgeous vase! Then, we pressed on to Blarney. We got to Blarney just after they’d closed the gates. Huge disappointment! This is when my mood started to go very south. I was exhausted, starting to get a headache from the drive down, and super disappointed that we’d missed the castle as well as going to Kilkenney, a town I’d wanted to stop in at a pottery factory. Sometimes I can take these kinds of things in stride. On this day I did not. I was worried we had wasted the day and knew we had a lot more driving ahead of us on Friday and wasn’t sure Tonya was up for navigating more of the teensy, tiny roads. We still had to drive a little ways to Kenmare, where we were spending the night. We got there…I admitted I was exhausted. I figured Tonya was a gazillion more times exhausted, but she was in pretty good shape!

We made it to our bed & breakfast, Abbey Court. Our host was super nice and showed us around and provided us with a map of Kenmare so that we could go explore and get dinner. Kenmare is the gourmet capital of Ireland, so we had to go out to dinner! We chose one of the restaurants our host recommended. Steaks and wine and it was great! But, I also began to fade very quickly during the meal. I had steak Wellington, it was great, but I didn’t come close to finishing it as I was too tired to even eat! Tonya didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand why she was not tired!

We made it back to the B&B and had a pow-wow about the next day. Turns out Tonya was feeling pretty confident about the roads at this point, so we decided to stick with the plan of driving the Ring of Kerry. I was excited!

Day 2, Friday

We woke up and were treated to a traditional Irish breakfast and, of course, tea! After eating, we packed up and headed into the village to shop in a few stores we’d seen the night before. They had the cutest home décor stores…kind of a vintage/shabby chic/cottage look – the look I’m going to go for with my new apartment! I loved looking at everything! Then, we were off to drive the Ring of Kerry.

The Ring of Kerry was great – gorgeous and fun! We were all confident with Tonya’s driving at this point and since we were just driving in a big circle, navigation was minimal, so it was much less tense! The Ring of Kerry is full of mountains, grass, sheep, and the ocean. There were lots of places to stop, get out and take in the view. We stopped in one little village and enjoyed tea in a little cafe. We took one detour to see an old Fort and had fun climbing around there as well as getting up close and personal with some sheep that weren’t gated. We took another detour and long walk to see The Gap of Dunloe, which was basically where 3 mountains come together with a lake at the bottom. It was so nice to get out and walk for a while! We really enjoyed our day on the Ring of Kerry.

On the drive back to Dublin, we stopped in Limerick for dinner. We were not impressed with Limerick, although, I wonder now if there was another area we would have enjoyed better. I think we were in the downtown area and it seemed pretty closed down for the evening. We did find a place to get dinner and it was pretty good.

Getting back to Dublin was fine…getting to our hotel was another story. Again, bad maps and no signs. We were all extremely frustrated, but finally got to our destination and parked the car. Turns out, we parked right by Pat’s pub. So, we went and enjoyed one last drink in Ireland and found it quite fitting that Pat’s pub was the first and last pub we visited in Ireland!

Saturday – home, sweet home

We got up early Saturday to leave plenty of time to get to the airport as we were sure it was going to be awful since our other Dublin driving experiences had been difficult. Turns out we had no problems at all – go figure, we could have enjoyed tea in the hotel, and instead found ourselves with plenty of time to eat breakfast at the airport (not my ideal scenario). But, breakfast was fine. We were scared to discover that our flight from Dublin to London was not British Airways, but Aer Lingus. It was not a horrible flight, but the landing was, again, scary!! They come in really, really fast.

All, in all, it was an incredible 2 week trip. I am very thankful to have experienced so much. To get to go to Greece after thinking about it for several years was a dream come true! And to love Ireland as much as I did was such a bonus. Plus, I had excellent travel partners! Tonya would explore anything, shop anywhere, and eat anything with me! Elizabeth and Sean were so laid-back and easy-going and were very nice to endure our shopping excursions. Plus, we’re all good sleepers! I love travelers who also like their sleep!

See my Southern Ireland pics, HERE!