Day 8 - The Ring of Kerry

Muckross House

I want to start today's blog with a discussion of Irish food. Stereotypically it is bad but that really isn't true today. In fact everything we have had has been really good and very high quality. Interestingly enough the restaurant menu is very similar to what is offered in the US but sprinkled here and there with an Irish classic now and then. The Irish dishes tend to be heavy in potatoes. The lamb stew comes with mashed potatoes in it. Boxty is a potato pancake usually served with something like beef stroganoff or a stew, Colcannon is mashed potatoes with cooked cabbage and chopped greens. We have especially liked the butter with fresh baked scones or brown bread, lamb stew, fish and chips, seafood chowder and Irish beef. All were first class. By the way, their potatoes for some reason are superior to ours. Maybe it is the climate or maybe the variety they use (a little yellow) but very good.

Master Bedroom View at Muckross House

We started out on our Ring of Kerry drive at about 9 am and got back to Killarney around 5 pm. All in all it was about 5 hours of driving with lunch and a lot of sightseeing stops. I drove and it wasn’t as harrowing as some people say. There was only one close encounter with a tour bus which went flying by so close that I had to blink but we came back with our side mirrors intact. The roads are narrow, some no more than a lane a half. In those you have to stop at a spot where you can pull a little off the road and let the oncoming traffic pass. We did follow Rick Steves’ advice and drove clockwise against the tour busses and that seemed to work well as we didn’t get stuck behind any busses.

Torc Waterfalls (Killarney National Park)

Going clockwise around the loop, you pass through Killarney National Park. We stopped first at Muckross House. The house is famous for hosting Queen Victoria for two nights in 1861. The owner of the house spent so much on the visit to impress the queen that he went bankrupt a few years later and had to sell. And for that, he got nothing - no title, no extra privileges. The house eventually was donated to form the basis of the national park.  

Ring of Kerry Road

The sights were magnificent and so I’ll just let the photos do the talking. First one is a view down one of the mountain valleys.

View out to Sea

View out to sea. Not sure if it is in the picture or not, but one of the Skellig Islands which you see off the coast was used in the filming of the most recent two Star Wars movies.