Ireland: The Ring Of Kerry

Despite the fact that until I moved to England, I had never heard of the Ring of Kerry before, I now can state with confidence that driving the Ring of Kerry is a must while in Ireland. The ring is an actual ring route that goes from the famous town of Killarney, down to Kenmare through Kenmare National Park and all the way to the coast, then winding its way back to Killarney. That is if you go the “non-recommended” route, or the “non-bus” route. I read lots and lots about the Ring of Kerry before our trip. And one thing that Rick Steves (who has only failed us once so far) said to make sure to do is to drive the opposite direction from all the tour buses. Apparently during high season, it gets crazy on the ring—long lines of tour buses stopping, passing, lots of tour groups trying to see the same things as you do at the same time of day.

Therefore, we left our Dingle house pretty early in the morning, drove to Killarney and down to Kenmare through the National Park. The weather was chilly but at least it was dry. Our first stop on this 179 km drive was Torc Waterfall. It’s a pretty tame waterfall, in fact, it’s pretty average for anyone who’s seen any major waterfalls.

BUT anything in Ireland, even mediocre, seems enchanted, thus this was a hit with the kids. It’s situated only a five minute walk from the parking lot, but the kids wanted to do a real hike further. Since we had a big drive ahead of us, we had to skip the hike.

Those mossy boulders reminded us of the trolls in “Frozen” movie.

Who would live in the trees? Katya would.

Next stop nearby (after narrowly missing hitting a bus coming down very fast on a blind corner of the cliffside road) was Ladies’ View. It was pretty-yes, but maybe a bit overrated.

It was pretty in its own way. And the fact that almost all of us got all muddy on the path that was apparently only meant for Leprechauns made it quite memorable. You think I am kidding?

Here is the proof.

Only Mark was perfectly fine hopping across the wet boggy trail.

The next half hour or so was quite intense in terms of twists and turns. It was probably the area where we could see the least but had to get through it to make sure we get to the coast. Unfortunately, the road was so windy (as in twisty), that poor Mark got really carsick suddenly and threw up. It was our luck that we were almost to a picturesque town of Sneem, where we were able to find a beautiful spot to stop, get some natural carsickness pills from the druggist (pharmacy), and eat our packed lunches. In a while, we browsed a few souvenir shops in town, trying to avoid the tourist crowds (wait, aren’t we tourists too?). And headed further along the famous scenic route.

Along the way we stopped several times, mostly at the beaches. WE LOVE BEACHES! Despite the mess (we come prepared) and lack of heat to go swimming, it’s always so peaceful and beautiful by the water. This sign has it right “Paradise Found!”-that’s how it feels in this beautiful country by the sea. The beach bar was close though, dang it.

This was the first beach we stopped at. I bet it’s crowded during summer months.

Oh, they are indeed friends even after hours and hours in the back of the car invading each other’s private space.

Years later, Alex’s favorite scenario to play is still “tsunami”.

And these two…they sure make life fun. Such spunky kids full of strong opinions (defiant)  and energy.

As we were getting closer to the most western point of the peninsula, we had to make a choice if we wanted to take an even more scenic route along the coast, called the ring of Skellig. We are so happy we did as it was our favorite part of this day’s drive.

One of the unexpected stops was this chocolate factory with a tiny shop on site. It was a good break for us to sample all the yummy chocolates and then buy a bag of more chocolate to savor later (mostly savored by mama that is).

St. Finian’s Bay…kids’ FAVORITE beach of the trip. Why? It had a perfect combination of rocks and sand. They love sand, but if you don’t have shovels and buckets, rocks are better. If it’s too rocky and dangerous then it becomes harder to navigate. This was perfect!

The sun was shining down on the sea as it was after 4 pm, but still warm. It was gorgeous!

Robert and I just sat back on the hill overlooking the beach letting the kids enjoy life.

And then Robert noticed something green on the beach--like a piece of lettuce stuck between teeth, this fishing net was left behind in the rocks with no one else in site.

Robert was trying to ignore it. He was trying to watch the kids laughing and playing their natural disaster games.

But  he couldn’t help it.

He HAD to go down to the beach and look at the net closer. He found out that one of them was in great condition! “Why don’t we rescue this great fishing net?”. Well, it does look like litter…and it could be our free souvenir from Ireland (since they sell this kind of nets at souvenir shops all over). I said, “Good luck, sweetie. Maybe you’ll manage to squish it into our already overfilled carry-on size suitcases for Ryanair”. And what do you know? The net is here in England with us, and we are still thinking about what is something cool we could do with this cool net.

The end of the Green Net Story.

We said good bye to the bay and drove further along Skellig Ring.

Finally, we reached Valentia Island, an island that could be accessed from Portmagee over the bridge. Our plan was to drive around the island and then catch a ten-minute ferry back to mainland from the other side of the island. We followed the signs for the ferry enjoying the views on the island.

Still following the signs…

We got to the ferry port and saw NO ferry. No open tourist office. No one to ask about the ferry either. Finally, a stranger, of an unknown Northern European descend, came along and told us that the ferries didn’t run any longer since it’s middle of October. The thing is that we checked online before heading out to Ireland and it said that they DO run till the end of October. Oh well. We just had to drive back to the bridge to get back to mainland and Portmagee…all while promising kids ice-cream (it was dinnertime already!).

Well, the last part of the drive was still very pretty, but we were not stopping. We were hoping to get to our house before dark (to avoid driving on funky narrow roads). And for dinner we had Chinese! In Ireland. I know. Kind of lame, but convenient and very yummy!

Great…now I am craving sweet and sour chicken…

Lyana.