The Ring of Kerry

A couple weekends ago, I went on a tour with Paddy Wagon tours around the Ring of Kerry.  We spent most of the day in the tour bus, but we got to see so much of south west Ireland and it was all gorgeous!!

I went with the girls from Elizabeth Town College (Lindsay, Molly, Kayla and Kathleen). We  had to be at the bus at 8:40am so we left campus at 7:30 to allow enough time to get to the bus stop, about a half an hour walk from campus.  Kayla and I knew the general direction of the place we were supposed to meet the bus, or at least we thought we did. Turns out we were wrong and ended up going in the complete opposite direction! Once we got to where we thought we were supposed to be, the Topaz gas station was not there. Fortunately a Rugby team was getting ready to get on a bus too, so we asked them for directions. They said, “It is a bit of a walk up and over that hill.” Just the words we want to hear at 8 in the morning. Fortunately we made it!! We probably ended up walking 2-3 miles that morning, and that was before the all day tour even started.

The rest of the day went smoothly. We got to see…

 


 MacGillycuddy's Reeks is a mountain range in County Kerry, Republic of Ireland.. They are all pretty proud that these are the only peaks in Ireland higher than 3,000 feet (haha just 7,000 feet lower than my home)

Killorglin and King Puck – There is a whole back story in this, but apparently the town has an annual festival and chooses a goat to be king for the week… or something like that. They even have a statue for him.

  Dingle Bay

Waterville and Charlie Chaplin

 

Killarney National Park

 

 Torc Waterfall

Throughout the day there were so many types of landscapes covered. It was cool how it changed so fast and that is was so different, but all stunning landscape!

During the tour, I found out there was a man on the bus named Jack Benson. There were about 60 people on the tour bus so it wasn’t until we were on our way home that I was able to actually meet him. He is a man in about his 60s I would say who lives in Michigan and was in Ireland on a business trip. I thought it was pretty cool to meet him and we are doing some research to see if we are cousins… very distant cousins, haha.