Ireland Trip Day Three

Day Three 5/31/10

Happy Memorial Day! They don't celebrate it here. Go Figure!

Since we slept all morning, we finally got going on our first adventure by 12pm. We decided to tour the Ring of Beara. It is a Peninsula that you can drive around and be back to Kenmare in half a day. We were told that you can go anywhere in Ireland and take pictures. We took that to heart as we ditched our car on the side of the road, lea pt a fence, and started snapping pictures of sheep. There were in this picture perfect field of green grass and yellow flowers--pictures to come soon. In our defense there was a sign indicating there was approved fishing at the bottom of the hill. No one arrested us, yet.

We visited the Dereen Gardens and saw rhododendrons the size of Texas. Seriously, they were bigger than our house. We spied several blue herons flying around. We also got in a great hike around the grounds. We ate our sack lunch in the car because it was raining but it was not a bad experience due to the biscuits. Yes, I said biscuits. They are not like the kind your Mama made, they are tea biscuits. There are entire aisles at the market dedicated to the biscuit. On the way to the house the day before we had picked up a roll because we were starving a sleepy. We hoped the sugar would satisfy and perk us up. It did both and now we love biscuits. They are basically shortbread cookies. As a side note here, they call Twix candy bars "chocolate covered biscuits". So lunch was yummy and we continued on the Ring of Beara trail. We stopped at every scenic view and took gobs of beautiful pictures, each better than the last. We went to Glengarriff Woods Nature Reserve and hiked to the top of Widow's Look out. Had we known this was straight up, we probably wouldn't have gone but, oh well. It was a nice view except the fog started to roll in. We couldn't see much for the rest of the trip due to fog, so we headed back to Kenmare.

Michael wanted to try a local pub. There are no restaurants open past 6 or 7pm. Anything food after that time has to be pub or "take away"--essentially fast food, although they don't really have what we call "fast food"--more on that later. We finally found a pub that looked worthy. They were extremely busy and not too friendly so we tried not to be annoying foreigners who don't know what to do. We watched others and quickly followed what they did. It was obvious we needed to order something from the bar or be looked down on and know quickly what we wanted to eat. Michael ordered a Guinness to drink and fish and chips to eat while I got a Bailey's coffee, water, and bacon and cabbage to eat. They sat us as quick as they could and we got down to some serious people watching. Most of the people there were from different countries. It was very interesting. When our food came, it was all soooooo good. Bacon, by the way, is ham. I didn't know that until the food was served but it was good anyway. Michael discovered he really liked the Irish Guinness but we will see if that trend continues at home.

After a full day of touring and full bellies we headed off the bed. Stay tuned for day 4!

Have a blessed evening and thanks for reading my blog!