A-Jaunting We Will Go

Another week has passed. We feel more and more at home here in our little town (village really) in Ireland. It’s hard to believe that this week will mark one month since we arrived. I even have a shopper card for one of the grocery stores!

Over the weekend we: the Husband, the Cousin, and I, boarded a bus for Killarney. I’ll have to do a post about Irish buses (someone remind me of this). These are not the stanky buses I’ve encountered in the past, these are NICE. A bit of trivia: if a town has Kil or Kill (Cill in Gaelic) in the name it means church. I know Killarney had a cathedral, so perhaps it’s referring to a main church, rather than village churches? Anyway, the drive was beautiful.

Taken from the bus window as we drove through the countryside. It really does look like this!

Our main planned activity for the day was a jaunting car ride. Jaunting cars have been around for at least a couple hundred years. They are generally a small (2-4 person) carriage pulled by one horse. Our horse was Pixie, and Pixie had an attitude. We also failed to get a photo of Pixie. Three people, all able bodied, with cameras, and none of us took a photo of the poor horse. Failure. The drive took us through a part of Killarney National Park. What a gorgeous place. It is nestled at the foot of the tallest mountains in Ireland (all of 1,000 metres, a little over 3,000 feet). What they lack in height they make up in beauty.

Also in the park are black cattle. Our guide informed us that this is where the black milk of Ireland comes from (Guinness, FYI). We also encountered an Irish submarine:

What you can’t see in the photo are the holes in it 🙂

Lough Leane with ABC in the distance (Another Bloody Castle)

Within the park grounds is Ross Castle, a rather lovely tower house style castle. While we did not tour inside the castle, we did walk around it.

Looking up at the front of Ross Castle. Remarkably well preserved.

After our jaunting car ride we headed into Killarney itself. What a cute town it is. Did we take photos of the cute town? No. Sigh. We failed on the travel documenting side of things. Did I have the best chocolate muffin ever? Yes! Did I get a photo of it? Yes!

I would travel an hour by bus just to have another one of these chocolate muffins. Best one ever. This is at the Mug and Bean in Killarney.

I guess we know where my priorities lie. Castles and food. No surprise there.

I promise to do better on the grand adventure to Galway next weekend. The brother is flying in to join our merry crew. Stay tuned for the first driving on the other side of the car/road experience. This could prove interesting.

I will leave you with this photo. I might have failed at taking other photos, but I’m pretty proud of how this one came out: