Killarney

I am now sitting at a 100+ year old desk in a 150 year old farmhouse writing a blog entry on a less than a year old iPad.   The B&B history has it that Michael Collins was a friend of the owner and stayed here regularly. 

We are in Killarney.  On the way to Killarney from Ballinhassig (Cork) we stopped at the Blarney Castle.  We did not press our lips to the drool on the Blarney Stone.  The last tourist to do this turned green, shrank to a small size and started selling a sugared cereal in America.  The one before him now sells cookies for Keebler.  We took pictures and wandered through the druid forest with very strange looking trees.  There was a kitchen built into a tree with a stone chimney and there were cookie looking droppings everywhere.

The Irish mist (light rain) fell in the morning of our first day.  We toured the Muckross House which was an inside activity.  We ran into a couple from our previous B&B and talked for a bit.  This is the second time we have run into couples we met at B&B's in towns other than where we were staying.  Ireland is not really big and I think I have seen the same old man in almost every town we have visited.  Considering the people we have met I would think the population of Ireland is 400 Irish and 2,345,859 American tourists.  We also met two folks from South Africa, four from Australia, five from Austria, two from Belgium and one from Israel.  The service industry seems to all hail from eastern Europe with the exception of the bartenders who are all Irish.

Today we did the Gap of Dunloe.  My grandmother did this in 1908 so I retraced her steps.  We took a very old bus to the boat landing.  From there we took a 40 minute ride through the several lakes to what I though was the famous Kate Kearney's Cottage.  I asked why it looked so different and a staffer told me that the view was from the other side.  When I made the trip to the other side the windows didn't match and there was only one chimney.  My grandmother's picture had a window, a door and then two windows .  It also had two chimneys.  I took many pictures and marveled at how it had changed.

I then walked up to a small outside bar and was told the drinks were free but the beer and wine were 2 euros.  I couldn't believe my luck.  I got both Sue and I glasses of wine.  When I was asked how I wanted my steak I began to wonder.  I asked and was told it was part of our package.  We didn't have a package.  I could have had a steak dinner but decided that honesty should prevail.  When I questioned the girl who had served us wine she asked, "Aren't you with the group?"  When I said no she just smiled and winked.

We then proceeded to a jaunty which is a two wheeled cart with an old horse up front and room enough in the carriage to literally bounce the kidneys out of two American tourists.  We proceeded up the Gap of Dunloe behind our trusty steed.  Our driver stood between us and yelled at the old horse for the next 45 minutes.  His yelling was broken by the occasional, "over there is the Black Valley and that's the highest mountain in Ireland".  Things were flying in our eyes and Sue proffered that it might be bugs.   The driver quickly affirmed her suspicions.  This was the truth until I noticed that I was covered in horse hair.  It was then our driver admitted his horse was shedding his summer coat.

We were also just inches from the end of the horse that doesn't chew.  We were quickly reminded of the Seinfeld episode with the Kramer horse carriage after the horse was fed Beef-a-Reeno.  We got the occasional whiff of something other than fresh air.

I was able to take pictures from some of the vantage points that had been in my grandmother's scrapbook from her 1908 trip.  We were dropped off at the real Kate Kearney's cottage with the correct number of windows, doors and chimneys.  It was all clear now that I had been at another cottage for the first set of pictures.  There were changes to this cottage as well but there was at least a similarity to the 104 year old photograph.

By the time our bus dropped us off at our B&B all of us on the bus were friends.  As the bus pulled out of the driveway everyone waved to us from their bus windows,

Tomorrow we are on to the Dingle peninsula.  The weather is supposed to hold for one more day and we are hoping for some great pictures.  Rain is in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday but the weathermen here are as accurate as they are back home.  Toss a coin and hope for the best.  It will either be a picture day or a Guinness day.  Both are good here.