SemiAntics

Deciding to leave Ennis was easy. Breakfast was not great; there was dirty looking silverware, the orange juice was horrible and the eggs were nasty. I made a poor decision to get the full Irish, and it was greasy like MacDonald’s. Yuck.

We knew we wanted to see Bunratty Castle, so we headed that way. It’s not far from Shannon airport or Ennis, so we figured we might just stay the night there. Bunratty is a small village built around the tourism that the castle attracts. There is the real Durty Nelly’s bar, a few shops and then the castle and the “folk” park. The castle has been restored from when Cromwell invaded and wrecked it, I think in the last 50 years, but I can’t remember the timeline. There are a ton of rooms, curly staircases and stuff, but a lot of them were closed off. The rest were jammed full of people. The only way between floors is the four stairs at each corner; these are curly ones that are hard to go up and down, and you can’t really pass people. So they are one way. The castle is fairly well furnished with old stuff, but it doesn’t feel like you’re visiting a castle the way it was, you feel like you’re visiting a castle that’s been filled with ancient dusty antiques – not how it would look back then. I guess you can’t expect a lot more though. As a consequence, most of the rooms are cordoned off.

We also toured the folk park, but it paled in comparison to the Frontier Culture museum in Staunton VA. There are also tons of places you can spend your money within the park, as well as outside.

Once we were done, we looked for a B&B. There were a few outside of town, northeast of the castle, and we picked one that looked really nice from the outside, checked it out and liked it. It’s called the Dunaree.

We went to spend some money and buy tourist stuff. Then we ate lunch at the Creamery. It was pretty nice. I got the roast beef dinner (yum!)

The lady there recommended a place to go hiking that is nearby, called Cratloe Woods. We spent a couple hours there and could easily have spent a whole day. There are plenty of hiking trails and nice views.

Later we went to the Creamery again, watched some golf on SkySports (which we don’t seem to get here in the USA), and then watched the band at Durty Nelly’s from across the road. Then we called it a night.

We took the ferry from Tarbert across to the other side of the Shannon. Our plan was to check out Kilkee, on the west coast above the Shannon. We got there about 11:00 and decided to walk around. There are a lot of nice cliffs, similar to the cliffs of Moher, but maybe not quite as high. However, unlike the cliffs of Moher, you can walk for miles along the cliffs. There are also place you can walk down to the ocean and there are swimming spots. We didn’t go in the water, but some crazy people did. I assume they suffered brain damage after getting in.

We walked south along the cliffs and then back to the town for maybe 5 or so miles total. When we got back to town we were hungry and stopped at a pub and ate. Roast beef is an excellent option in Ireland. You get three large slices of roast, vegetables or chips and salad. Add a pint and you’re set!

We didn’t find a nice place to stay in Kilkee. It seemed more like a resort town than a tourist town, if that makes sense. We left and ended up in Ennis for the night. The B&B there was kind of noisy and there were loud Italians above us who walked around a lot on a creaky floor. We decided not to stay two nights.

We toured around downtown Ennis a little bit and ate dinner there, but nothing eventful happened.

We reluctantly checked out of our beautiful B&B in Kenmare and headed up the road towards the Dingle Peninsula. Kenmare is right on the edge of the famed “Ring of Kerry” road. The Ring of Kerry is supposed to be spectacular but mobbed with putt-putting tourists and huge tour buses. Everyone says the Dingle Peninsula offers the same sights without the crowds. Dingle is also an Irish-speaking region and famed for its traditional music. Everyone told us Dingle was lovely.

We went to Dingle, and we didn’t like it. Maybe we were in the wrong part of town on the wrong day of the week in the wrong type of weather. I don’t know. It was crowded. The streets were all congested. We parked the car and went looking for a B&B. We saw trash everyone and the air was stinky. We decided not to stick around.

We drove through the Connor Pass to the north side of the Peninsula. Climbing Mt. Brandon, the highest peak on the Peninsula, was on Nathaniel’s to do list. Mt. Brandon looked pretty inhospitable from the top of Connor Pass–definitely not my cup of tea–not Nathaniel’s either. We drove on up the coast looking for a place to stay. We ended up in Tarbert on the banks of the River Shannon.

Day 10 was a lazy day. We were tired from our long drive the day before. After breakfast we both went back to bed for a bit. We didn’t really get motivated until early afternoon when our stomachs started growling. We had discovered a vegetarian cafe in town the night before, so we went back there for lunch. After lunch we headed out into the countryside in search of the Gougane Barra Forest Park. Our friend, Steve, recommended it, and the guide book also said good things about it. We drove, and we drove, and we drove. It turns out that the park is 20 km off the main road, much further than we thought.

The park was nice and quiet. We found a nice spot along the trail to sit, enjoy the view, and listen to the wind in the trees.

We spent the evening reading and poking around the B&B. We didn’t really eat dinner because we were still full from lunch, but our tummies started growling around 10 pm. Unfortunately, all the food places in town were closed by then. The music was over by then too. We had hot chocolate for dinner and went home and got in bed.

Today we spent getting up late, getting fed breakfast, being lazy and then being lazy more. We finally left Steve and Niamh’s house around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. We went immediately to the Jameson distillery in Midleton for a tour. We were told it was a “must do.” It was a little expensive, and it’s a lot like going to a beer brewery tour, but it was fun. There were tons of nice sized souvenirs to buy and drink later, but that stuff kind of scares me, so we didn’t get any.

We learned that Irish whiskey is triple distilled for a “smoother” drink. I don’t know. It’s also aged at least 7 years in an old oak (pre-worn in) cask. Very nice. I’m not sure if you are drinking oak juice when it’s all done, but millions of gallons get down the throats of eager people each year. Irish whiskey is made from barley (the finest available, of course). Some gets malted, some doesn’t. It’s all kiln dried, not exposed to smoke like that Scotch in your glass right now. By the way, American whiskey is only distilled once. Blech! How could you drink it? Scotch is only distilled twice.

The tour was grand. We got done and there were some tastes, but they wanted to water it down with Coke or something. How could you? We skipped; it didn’t seem advisable for an American tourist to drink whiskey and then drive on the left side of the road while going through Cork City. Not a good idea!

From Midleton, we drove around Cork to the southwest, sort of the coastal road. It’s a nice long (LONG) drive to Kenmare, and when you get to Kenmare you’re very tired. We were. We stumbled into a really nice B&B here, so we booked it for two days. It sits on a hill above the river that goes by the town. You can walk about 3 minutes and get into town. Town isn’t very big. It’s just a triangle with pubs and shops on all sides. It’s very convenient. We heard some nice music from Shambala (a traditional duo of harp, low flute and guitar plus vocals) at a pub before going to bed.

Just for fun, here’s a shot of the Guarda station (police) in Kenmare.

This is a picture of a beetle that I saw on our hike. It seems like a nice one to have on the front page.

Leaving the Killuan B&B was the start of a great day. We decided to drive over some mountains south of Cahir, but we had a terrible map from the tourist info center which confused us. We ended up driving to Clonmel, back and then around a bit looking for the turn. Heading south, finally on the right road, we drove through or over the “Vee”. The Vee is a road over and through the Comeragh mountains. When you get to the top of the pass there is a pullover and you can hike (hillwalk). We went east to the top of Sugarloaf Hill. You can see the picture.

Once we got through hiking, we were tired and ready to head on to Midleton, just east of Cork City. Our friends Steve and Naimh had offered to put us up (for as long as we needed). They wanted to show us real Irish hospitality. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon and chatted. Later Niamh made us dinner and then we walked into Midleton to some pubs. We listened to some music and then went home late.

Day 7 found us driving through the countryside of central Ireland. We stopped in Cahir to tour a medieval castle. The Cahir Castle was built on an island in the River Suir back in 1142. The castle was lovely. We wandered around for about an hour and a half, climbing towers, poking our heads down into the dungeon, etc. There were a bunch of displays set up describing castle life in the middle ages. The keep had a whole room dedicated to describing the life of women…very interesting. Did you know that the average life expectancy back then was early to mid thirties? There was also a room dedicated to the siege of 1599. One of the attackers wrote about the battle in great detail, making it easy to recreate today. There was a huge model showing all the crucial moments of the siege. It must have been fun to make!

This is the North Tower.

The castle tour put us a in a good mood. It was a gorgeous day, and Cahir has lots of green space and is quite pleasant in the sun. We decided to stay the night.

It was a bad decision. We wanted a B&B with internet. We were planning to stay with some friends in Cork the next night, and we needed internet to contact them since our phones don’t work in Ireland. The first B&B was very nice, but it didn’t have WiFi. We decided to stay in the B&B two houses down. It was much older and shabbier, but at first glance, it seemed clean, and it did have WiFi. The hostess was also a bit overbearing and hard to say “no” to. We were happy enough–for the first half hour. At that point, I went to the bathroom and discovered it hadn’t been cleaned, and the toilet was pretty nasty. Things went down hill from there. The woman had two little, yappy dogs that were constantly fighting and yapping at each other right outside our window. We discovered that she kept the rubbish bin right beside our window too. It smelled like rotten meat in our room for hours after she opened it. You could hear everything anybody did in the other rooms. At about 9 pm, we couldn’t take the smell anymore and walked downtown. Hardly anything was open. The pubs were dead. We comforted ourselves with some ice cream from the Emerald Isle take-away joint. We left as early as we could the next morning. She had a sign up in the dinning room. “Old age and treachery will triumph over youth and skill.” Very fitting.

We drove on to Cork with our skin crawling.

Sunday we headed up north to Achill Island. We planned on staying there a day or two and doing some “hill walking” and beach bumming. When we got there, it was cold, windy, and spitting rain. But people were swimming, wind-surfing and wading. These are things you must do at the beach during the summer time even in Ireland. There are sheep roaming the whole island because the majority of the grazing land is held “in common.” So the sheep roam the beach.

Achill is the dirtiest place we have seen in Ireland, in terms of litter. Most of it comes in with the tide, but there was also a lot of it scattered about from tourists and the like. There was also a campsite that had been blown around after it had been abandoned. So there was tons of junk just laying around; evidently there is no one to clean it up.

Still, it was a nice place. If it had been sunny there would have been plenty of climbing and hiking to do. We decided to head on inland since we’d been on the coast a while.

From Achill, we just drove inland and ended up just south of Birr in County Offaly. We stayed at a farm house there. It was nice, but old looking and creaky. Grace was jumpy, so it was the perfect time to yell “boo” at her. It was not a great B&B, but it was satisfactory.

We’re still measuring every place against the Green Lawn in Lisdoonvarna. It gets a lot worse, but that’s for Day 7.

The B&B was in the middle of a cow field basically, so it was nice. One thing I’ve noticed is that farmers here don’t overgraze like they do in the states. All the fields are green, green and more green. I know Ireland has the advantage of 300 days of rain (a guess), but it’s much nicer. We saw a large dairy herd today and they were in a nice green field – the kind of field that is on the dairy containers in the states.

Today we got up early, grabbed breakfast and a takeaway lunch from SuperValu, and headed up the Sky Road. The Sky Road is a loop around a finger of land out into the Atlantic. It follows a long ridgetop on the way out, and then around the base of the hill at the edge of the inlet on the way back. We went the wrong way because we missed the turn, but it worked out fine.

From there we went to the Connemara National Park and hiked up to the top of Diamond Hill. It’s a good trail, and it was the perfect day. We had sun the whole way so the views were spectacular. Of all the days for it to be sunny, this was great!

We got to the top and were tired, so we went back the way we came instead of circling around the whole loop. The wind is ferocious up there!

Once we got down we ate lunch and then headed off to the Kylemore Abbey. It’s kind of a tourist trap. We had been recommended to go to it, but in hindsight I would skip it. It was nice if it was free, but not for 20 Euros (that with the discount). There are some nice gardens, but they’re not THAT nice, and then there is the abbey and church which are picturesque, but nothing more. The thing I liked the most was the huge old pine trees.

Our plan was to hit Westport for the night, but we got stuck in traffic and couldn’t find the place we were looking for. It was a music festival weekend in Westport, so we decided to skip town for Newport.

Today we spent driving from Lisdoonvarna to Clifden. It rained most of the day, and we didn’t have many adventures. We went through Galway around the middle of the day. Even on the main roads it was very busy. It probably took us 30 minutes to get through the main part of Galway. Galway is the biggest town we’d seen, and by far the most modern. There were lots of large shopping malls and cookie-cutter subdivisions. Even in the new construction, things seem to be nicely made, not junky.

From Galway to Clifden, the drive is very pretty. It is rolling hills sidelined by lakes almost the whole way. There are also mountains nearby, so it’s just about as picture perfect Ireland as you’ll see.

Clifden is a medium small town. There is a nice center that is sort of oval shaped with shops lining both sides of the street all the way around. Well, shops, bars, pubs, B&B’s, butchers, etc. There is even a SuperValu grocery store. It’s the big grocery store we’ve seen in the bigger towns. We stayed in Ganon’s B&B which is above Ganon’s sport shop and directly across from the SuperValu. It was really nice except that we had to share a bathroom. Even that was OK though. It was a nice bathroom, everything is nice tile or granite or something. Very clean. If you found a hotel in the states like that it would be $200 a night (with your own bathroom).

We found a nice bar to each lunch at. Then we went looking for a room for about an hour. We walked all the way around the center, asking and poking around until we tried Ganon’s. Then we took a long nap as we were pretty worn out from driving and stuff. Later we went to a bar for dinner and music. There were three guys playing music. One played banjo like it was a guitar, and guitar, and he sang also. Another played guitar and a third played bass. It was pretty decent music, and we stayed for a while. Then we went to bed.

Right after we went to bed we kept hearing these loud honking noises. We later found out that it was probably a “stag party,” which is to say, a bachelor’s party.