Entries Tagged as 'Travel & Events'
The keener among you may have noticed that we posted
the remainder of our Ireland pictures on Monday night. That's 5 more sets of pictures — but towards the end there aren't too many per set because we were getting tired of the whole touring and taking pictures thing. I'll try to wrap everything up here, but if it gets too long I'll just split it out and save the rest for Friday.
Before we left I had to take the opportunity to show you
the view from our bathroom.
Starting out from Kenmare, (where I plan to retire) we took the stretch of road that we had avoided the previous day — thus landing us in the Gap of Dunloe,
thank god — through Killarney National Park, up the western coast, and then eventually to a BnB just a short drive from the Cliffs of Moher. Oddly, we didn't see a single animal other than birds in the National Park.
In KNP we were nearly killed when a tractor-trailer came thundering down the road toward us and we passed each other on a narrow bridge with what I can in all honesty estimate as about 6 inches of spare space to share between the walls of the bridge, our car, and the truck; and then immediately after pulled over into a parking lot to catch our breath and let the adrenaline pass. While we were stopped, we saw a sign for a nature trail and decided to go for a short hike. It was there that we saw the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen, though I've never been to Niagara and in all honesty haven't seen many waterfalls in person. I took the opportunity to take some long-exposure shots further downstream, and at least one of them
turned out pretty well. There were a few other couples there as well, and we got a few shots of us
without arms outstretched to hold the camera. I would estimate that
the path (we did the yellow trail) was about a mile and a half long, and it had more awesome views and I peed in the woods. (In Ireland!)
Between KNP and the Cliffs of Moher there wasn't a whole lot to see or do, and as it turned out our path back toward Dublin over the next few days would be much the same. We ended up getting pretty familiar with Irish radio, and in particular we liked
RTE 2FM, and
Nikki Hayes and
Rick O'Shea – who I picture as more of an Irish 80's Seinfeld look based on his voice. I don't know what it was, but there was a certain charm to the radio there, and I quite liked it. (I also found out about the
Plain White T's, who are
good excellent)
When we got to our BnB one of the owners recommended we go see the Cliffs of Moher that afternoon because it would be rainy and foggy the next day. It was foggy and rainy already, but I'm glad we did because it was far worse the next day.
The
pictures aren't as dramatic because you can't get very close to the edge. This place was much more touristy than the cliffs we saw on the Ring of Skelleg (in my previous Ireland post), so I'm sure there is at least one person who has fallen off.
I think that's enough for one day. Next time: The Burren, Galway — maybe more.
New photo set available here
In preparation for our trip, we bought a road atlas of the entire island. We were — which is to say that mostly Megan was — frustrated to find out that a majority of the smaller local roads were unnamed on the map. Having driven on the wrong side of them for 8 days straight, I can tell you that there is good reason that these roads were unnamed on the map. They were unnamed on the ground. The map itself proved to be more valuable than any directions we printed from Google, giving us an idea of the number and frequency of side streets and landmarks like mountains and bodies of water that are so crucial "where," quite literally, "the streets have no names."
I feel it somewhat important to mention that I am quite the opposite of what you would call a fan of U2. I'll routinely change the channel or turn the radio off if I recognize one of their songs. Still, somehow, I managed to make the connection with the lyric I just quoted (they are from Ireland, after all). Go figure.
The views, needless to say, are astounding. Dictionary.com defines
breathtaking as, "thrillingly beautiful, remarkable, astonishing, exciting, or the like" and I would venture to say that the person who coined the phrase very likely was, or at least quite possibly could have been standing in The Gap of Dunloe. It is a discouraging thought at the end of a long day of touring — while browsing the pictures you took that day — to think how the pictures utterly fail to capture the magnificence of the experience. To borrow an oft-used expression from my favorite author Bill Bryson, it was patently beautiful.
We had stumbled into the gap on circumstance. Our itinerary for the day was to travel the Ring of Kerry (where we took the photo I posted on the Thursday of our trip) which took what can be considered a main highway in Ireland — one, or sometimes two lanes in each direction, lines indicating lanes (not all that common), and pull-offs at regular intervals just wide enough for three quarters of the roller skate you rented at the airport, and of course buss loads of blithely happy and curiously interested senior citizens thundering by — that circled a large peninsula in County Kerry; part of which we would repeat the following day as we traveled north to our next destination. With that in mind, we decided to take an unnamed "little yellow road" as we had taken to calling them based on that being their only identifying feature from the road atlas, through a valley and back up through a mountain pass called the Gap of Dunloe, cutting off a corner of the ring, and the section of highway that we would have otherwise repeated.
If there is a Heaven, and if it resembles anything on Earth, my guess is that it is based loosely on the gap in which we stood. It was a hazy day, and not much blue sky could be seen for kilometers in any direction. Still, somehow, the most magnificent colors protruded from every crevice and the beauty that exists naturally whether we came along to appreciate it or not was at once and wholly evident. Driving up the side of the mountain on the way to the gap we stopped at least twice to take pictures of waterfalls and ooh and aah at the valley behind us and gorgeous mountainside. Once inside, we decided that what we had seen was absolutely nothing in comparison. The road goes out of its way not to obstruct nature too much — twisting and winding and climbing and falling as the boulders and river demanded. The walls of the mountains on either side of us were wet with dew, and the ground saturated. The river flowed with a respectable force through a series of pools and waterfalls that begged to be cooed at; and coo we did, at each and every pull-off, as well as a few times where we just stopped in the middle of the road because there was nobody behind us for kilometers.
I'm sure that just like the pictures, my words simply cannot do this stretch of road justice.
And, it is my duty to remind you, this is all just for a stretch of road that took us, at our leisurely pace, maybe an hour to cover.
Everything in Ireland is on the same order of magnitude. No matter where you go, you are still in eye shot of at least one mountain, fog permitting.
Oh, and goats on the road.
We even made a pit stop at the cliffs voted best view in Kerry County.
Photo set 3 is online
Ireland is an island of magic and fancy. The magic is found in places you might not expect, like nearly every fast food restroom (get used to calling them "toilets").
There you'll find such amazing devices as a three-stage faucet that dispenses soap, followed by water, followed by warm air; or, in your simpler establishments like McDonalds, the soap and water are still done (*cringe*) manually, but the hand dryer is a device where you place your hands between two pillars of magic, and by removing them slowly, the water evacuates the premises with such vigor that you want to go out and soil your hands, merely for the pleasure of washing them again.
The fancy is that — and get this — every Happy Meal comes with Raisins. And if that weren't enough fancy for you, this seems to be the one place in the country where french fries are actually referred to as "fries" rather than "chips."
If that hasn't got you on the phone with your Realtor lining up an Open House, nothing will.
