After two uneventful flights, San Diego to Newark and onward to Shannon, thank you United, we were met by our driver at the exit from customs with no problem. Two hours later we were at our hotel in Killarney. The first thing we learned was to shorten the “i” to the vanishing point when saying K’llarney. As our plane broke through the clouds we were greeted by the greenest green land we could imagine. For most of our drive both of us were swiveling our heads so we would not miss anything. Exhaustion did not seem to catch up with us, yet
We checked into the hotel and set out to find a spot for lunch. This is a tourist town. What wasn’t a restaurant or hotel was a shop mostly with local goods. We made a number of stops and haven’t bought anything, yet. Carol found a wonderful sweater in a green she loves, but they do not have her size and the item is discontinued. I have not bought the sweater, shirt, scarf I have fallen in love with, yet.
We had lunch in a pub and I had my first Guiness of the trip, yum! Then we walked to Killarney National Park, not more than 15 minutes from our hotel, by the direct route. While listening to the guide describe the history of the house I fell asleep, standing up! As I started to fall, I woke up and caught myself. We decided it was past time to call it a day. We got lost returning to the hotel, well may be bit disoriented, and took an extra 15 minutes returning. By now the temperature had risen into the 60s and the sun was shining, something every Irish person me spoke to commented on – it is quite rare.
We slept for just over an hour until awakened by a call from our guide, Rowan, who had just arrived at the hotel. We felt refreshed and joined him in the lobby for tea and ginger bread, Oh My! Then off to seek out dinner and music all within 10 minutes of our hotel. Rather than start with Jamesons, I had a shot of Crested 10 chased with Murphy’s Stout. It is going to take some doing and record keeping if I want to sample all the varieties available. We crawled back to the hotel with the sun still shining at 9 PM and I am falling asleep as I write this.