The Ring of Kerry AKA The Ring of Wonders

Hello Everyone!
I hope this post finds you doing well today.  I unfortunately woke up feeling a bit under the weather...so I am going to try to fight off the sickness by staying in bed for the most part and getting homework done.  But before I do that, I wanted to give more information that was requested about the Ring of Kerry bus ride that I went through which has been my favorite experience since being at Harlaxton!  Here it goes...
The day we left for the Ring of Kerry (Friday) was absolutely gorgeous.  The sun was starting to rise, the clouds were dark (but parting away!), and the mountains were in sight and beautiful.  I was told by past students that the bus ride was awful, so I was trying to keep an open mind about being on a bus for 8 hours that day.  Little did I know, it was about to be the best experience thus far!  We boarded and started our tour off by listening about a little history of the Ring of Kerry from our couriers, who are Harlaxton staff.  We were told that we were going to see many beautiful scenes and some places we were only stopping at for a few minutes so we could get some pictures.  Sounds fair enough, considering we had 112 miles of scenery to look at!

Our first stop was at the Red Fox Inn and Kerry Bog Village, which was absolutely beautiful.  The sun was shining over head, and the mountains were visible in the distance.  We were given 1.5 hours at this location to tour the Village and to try the "best Irish coffee you will ever find".  We entered the village quickly, because we were all excited about the coffee!  We saw animals, statues, small houses- you name it.  It was really cool to see the history of this Village because it's not common to see it nowadays.  The thatched roofs were pretty cool, along with all of the furniture still in tact.  We had a lot of fun here, because the group I was with was starting to become more friendly; people were taking pictures of others doing silly things, and everyone was laughing with each other.  We had about 30 minutes to down some Irish coffee, so we skipped into the Red Fox Inn.  They were prepared for us, that's for sure.  All they had to do was add the coffee and cream to our drinks when we entered (there were over 50 of us!).  I ended up trying Irish coffee, which is made with whiskey, but I actually had an entire Baileys and coffee, which was really sweet.  It was a lot of fun sitting and talking with different groups of people.  When we were getting ready to leave, there were a few raindrops falling, so we had to RUN to the bus because no one wanted to get wet!  However, the rain stopped fairly quick.  We were soon on our way to our next stop, Dingle Bay.

The second stop was really fast; we were able to use the emergency exits to jump out fast!  We had about 10 minutes to take as many pictures as possible.  Dingle Bay was beautiful; but it was also on a steep mountain without any barriers if someone were to fall down.  Everyone was falling over when they were trying to get pictures because the wind was blowing so hard.  I even had a close call...but no worries, I'm still alive :)  We also grabbed a quick group photo that I'm still trying to locate, so hopefully I can post it later.  We were on the bus again quickly because we still had many stops to go.  At this point, we were driving along and had sang "Brown Eyed Girl" at least 5 times.  We were laughing and joking about all of the sheep that we had seen- people went as far to make up their own "sheep puns", which were so corny you had to laugh.  We ran into some traffic, so that's when the bus pictures of the front and back started to commence.  After 15 minutes of waiting for construction, we were on our way again.

Waterville was our third stop, and one of my best photo stops.  We were three for an hour, so we were able to get a lot of pictures in during this time.  I loved the beach and the water, even though it was really windy and cold.  The rocks that were there were a lot of fun to climb on as well.  The beach was very relaxing and calm...and it was nice to just look out onto the water.  A lot of people were taking silly pictures of each other...some of the boys were pretending to be the "Little Mermaid" on the rocks, and others were doing handstands on the sand.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty stop that had us all in awe of Ireland and its scenery.  We boarded the bus quickly and headed out because we had a lot more to see!

We made our way up the mountains to get to another beautiful view of the coastline.  This was the Madonna Statue and Coomakista Pass stop.  This stop was EXTREMELY windy.  We all got off the bus and started walking sideways the wind was blowing so hard.  Our couriers decided to get a group photo at this location, which was quite amusing.  Everyone was FREEZING cold and the wind was blowing us backwards.  We got a great picture, featured on the left.  It definitely describes us as a group of people who had just started to get to know each other earlier in that day.  See if you can spot me (hint: I'm more towards the viewer's left).  It was a great stop to get pictures though.  I kept thinking of the Irish blessing when I stopped here.  This was a beautiful location and there was a man playing Irish tunes.  He also had his sheep with him.  Many students went and held the sheep in their arms.  I was not that adventurous and got back on the bus quickly after getting my pictures.  I was cold to the bone and wanted the heat of the bus again!  

Our next stop was Sneem, which was a funny name for a town.  By the time we got to Sneem, we had sang "Sweet Caroline" and "Brown Eyed Girl" at least 30 more times than the USA legal limit.  The funny thing is, we were listening to Irish radio the whole time.  Sneem was a cute village; all of the houses were painted a different color.  The reason for this was because the townspeople needed to be able to find their way home from the pubs at night!  We had lunch at this stop, and there were a lot of us who headed to the Village Kitchen, which was a family-owned restaurant with home cooked food.  It was a nice change from the brown bag lunches that we had been eating, that's for sure!  We took over the restaurant and by the time we finished eating, it was time to board the bus again.  I wish I had more time to explore the village...but we still had a few more stops to go before we got back to Killarney, and it was already 2:30pm. 

 

Our next stop was "Ladies View".  There is a small story behind this that I believe I said in my video that I posted on the last blog, but I can tell it again in case you weren't able to make it out.  Queen Victoria was travelling the countryside to view the Ring of Kerry.  She had her ladies in waiting with her as well.  When they arrived at this location, it was difficult to see from the carriage window.  She requested that her ladies in waiting went to see what it looked like.  When they came back, they said it was definitely worth a lady's view.  There's where the name comes from!  It was a breathtaking view of the lake below and the mountains around.  We were stopped here for a long time because everyone loved the view so much!  The pictures we got were stunning.  I was so impressed by everything that I was seeing.  Again, I thought of the Irish Blessing and how blessed I was to be on this journey.  We were on the bus quickly because there were more tour groups coming through.  They were American, and we were all high-fiving each other and saying how wonderful it was to see other Americans in Ireland, which was really fun.

We ended our tour of the Ring of Kerry at Torc Waterfall, which was so so so so pretty!  It was a good 5 minute hike to get there, but the entire time you were enveloped in this lovely green scenery, which made it seem more like Ireland.  The river was just refreshing to look at, and the waterfall was really incredible.  I have been to Niagara Falls before and seen that waterfall, but this one was so simple it was just stunning.  I took a video here as well, which is in the last blog.  A lot of us tried to climb the rocks in the middle of the stream, which was a bad idea.  I had no idea that they would be that slippery and full of moss.  I slipped a little bit on a rock and got completely muddy.  However, I think it was totally worth it.  

All in all, the Ring of Kerry was the best experience yet!  I hope you enjoyed more of the story that goes along with it.  I will be staying here this weekend and maybe going to London next weekend, so the journey continues then.  If there is anything you want to hear about, I can try to blog it for you during the next week :)  I miss you all and surprise- I'll be home two months from today!

Cheers!
Taylor <3