Day 5 - Ireland Adventure

Kenmare to Galway

Ring of Kerry is a wonderful drive, as we've said, but to see the real beauty, you have to get off the road,

and venture into places like Killarney National Park

to get an eyeful of wonderful sights like the Torc Waterfall.

We're getting better at taking Selfies. Kind of.

We left the Ring of Kerry and road to the small town of Listowel.

It isn't on many people's must see in Ireland lists, but Listowel is the Quinlan Ancestral Home, so we had to pay a visit.

The first thing you see in Listowel is St Mary's Church, which is the Quinlan Ancestral Church.

Even though it is almost 200 years old, it's still used every day and still holds all that great old energy.

Directly across the street from St. Mary's is another very big, old, grand church, that we were told was the Protestant church in town. I have no doubt there's quite a story on the two churches if we dig deep enough.

Listowel Castle was another of our favorite sight-seeing spots. The castle is a Anglo-Norman castle dating back to the 1400s that has been renovated by the Office of Public Works.

Probably what made it such a pleasure to visit (other than the fact that the tour was free) was our tour guide, Morgan,

who had story after story about the building, architecture and daily life at the castle.

After a quick lunch, we headed north towards the Cliffs of Moher. Right in the middle of our ride was a lovely fjord, that we opted to ferry across rather than ride around.

Back on land, we'd only ridden a little bit when Quilty Beach came into view.

Since it was still really hot, and the water looked inviting we stopped for ice cream and a little sea-side break.

Then made our way to the Cliffs of Moher.

We've mentioned many times that we get up and going very early...basically to avoid crowds of tourists...wherever we go. It works great 90% of the time. Today wasn't one of those times. Granted, we didn't expect to get this far north any earlier than mid-afternoon which is about when we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher.

Even though we mentally prepared for the onslaught, it was epic test of patience. I can't believe we got any pictures without 1000 people in the shot.

Apparently we aren't the only ones who don't thrive in crowds

There were seriously two rooms at the edge of the cliffs with big windows and a soothing water feature where people could just sit and contemplate not strangling other human beings.

It was worth it dealing with all the other tourists, though.

We tore ourselves away from the Cliffs and ended the day in Galway, where we did nothing but grab something to eat and call it a day.