I Rode 'Round a Lovely Ring of Kerry: Ireland Vacation 3

Our first bus tour out of Killarney took us to the Ring of Kerry, that circles the beautiful peninsula of Kerry.  The bus rides were interesting, and with my propensity to motion sickness, an interesting challenge, especially with narrow roadways and lots of twists and turns.  The frequent stops and sips of Coca-Cola helped me get through any nausea.

At one of our stops, there was a man with goats, sheep, dogs and cats, and one very sleepy puppy.  The puppy was asleep in a shoe, his head resting on a tin can.  Later, the man tried to awaken the puppy with a kitten, but the puppy just brushed aside that minor annoyance.

There was also an early stop to get coffee (Irish Coffee among the choices).  These businesses along the bus routes cleaned up.  There were several buses stopped at the same time, and the flow of traffic was constant.  Alison and I fancied that if we lived in Ireland we might like to have one of those stops. 

A shot typical of the breathtaking scenery we could see from our bus.  I may have used this shot in yesterday's blog, but I think it may have actually come from the Ring of Kerry day.  Anyway, it's a beautiful shot, and we did indeed done seen it.

We saw many, many fields.  A marvelous patchwork for sheep, cows or horses.  Kerry had a range of mountains in its center.  People from Appalachia and the Rockies might call these hills.  We from the flatlands call them mountains.


We had lunch each day on the road.  Alison and I learned to split an entree.  We were still kind of full from breakfast.  The traditional Irish breakfast is HUGE.  It includes (but is not limited to) three kinds of sausage, bacon, eggs, soda bread, toast, and most curiously to us Yankees - baked beans! It could easily set you up for hours.  Again, I wish I had pictures of food, but by the time I think of taking a picture, it is mostly gone.

The beaches of Kerry included Irish surfers.  Yes, you heard that right.  Irish surfers.

There was a town that we passed that had an annual festival that made a selected goat King of the town for the festival.  Sound odd?  Still and all, a better choice of leader than Donald Trump.

Another shot of the valleys and mountains of Kerry.

One of the stops we made was to observe a man directing his dogs to control his sheep.  It was impressive the series of commands and signals that were developed for the dogs.  It makes me think my own dogs have been holding out on me.  The dogs were very intelligent and responsive.  The sheep?  Eh, not so much.

Speaking of dogs, here is one who liked to hang out on the back of a donkey.  You could almost hear the dog saying, "Hey!  HEY!  Check out my ass!"

There were islands just off the coast of Kerry.  I think they called them skelligs.  One of the skelligs was the Skellig Michael, the island used for Luke's home in two of the recent Star Wars movies.  It was a surprise to me.  I had kinda thought it was filmed on a different planet.  OK, so now you can see easy it is for science fiction movies to suck me into their visions.

The skellig shown here is not the Skellig Michael.  Oh, no.  That would be too damn easy.

The one hidden in the mist here, in the center of the picture, that is the Skellig Michael.  And that would be our white whale for the next two days.

We came back that night and had one of our best meals of the trip.  We sat at the second-floor window overlooking the streets of Killarney, and I had Killarney Beef Pie, and the best beer of the trip, a local Killarney brew.  Again, no pictures.  My bad.


It was a lovely ending to a beautiful day.

More to come!