Day 8: Mmmmm Hamburger

We woke up today full of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.  Unfortunately a bunch of other tourists seemed to wake up at the same time full of grumpiness, inappropriate fart jokes, and disregard for rules.  We went to the Torc waterfall parking lot but it was overfull of cars so we just moved along.  There are plenty of better waterfalls back home so no big loss. 

Up next was the Bonane Heritage site which had some cool ruins all within a 2km walk.  There was a ring fort, a stone circle, some famine ruins, and a few other things.  Nothing spectacular, but it was cool to see how they lined up the stone circle to match the different times of year and locations of other settlements. 

We then stopped by Muckross House which is a pretty cool old house but it was also packed with visitors and they were charging way too much to do anything there.  We went for a nice walk but moved on without battling the crowds.  Kinda a rough start to a day but it was still beautiful everywhere.

Next we popped over to Ross Castle.  Everything in Killarney is really close together so not nearly as much driving today!    For some reason the castle wasn’t nearly as busy as everywhere else even though it was amazing.  Back in the 1970s a nice American gentleman bought the castle and then offered to gift it to Ireland as long as they promised to restore the ruins to their former glory.  So, the people of Ireland relearned many of the old ways of building to totally piece the castle back together exactly as it was before.  All the woodworking was nailed with wooden pegs through hand-hewn lumber and the rocks were hand chiseled and place.  It was an amazing project and was really cool to walk through and see exactly what the castle would have looked like hundreds of years ago (luckily the toilet facilities were updated so we didn’t have the authentic smell). 

We then went to downtown Killarney and walked around for a while.  We stopped by Murphy’s Ice Cream for some unique ice cream flavors.  They use a lot of local ingredients like sea salt, Jameson whiskey, and various fruits and berries to flavor their ice cream made from local cows.  I had Jameson and butterscotch, Cris had sea salt and malted chocolate.  Both were amazing. 

Saint Mary’s Cathedral was just down the street.  It is a smaller church that is still used so a lot of Catholic folk go there to pray and light candles and whatever else they do.  The organ was pretty sweet. 

Finally, we drove up to our Airbnb in Castlegregory.  We drove through the typical Irish mountains and countryside but then the view suddenly changed.  Gone were the bright green fields and constant sheep, now we were met with views of long sandy beaches, occasional palm trees, and dunes covered in grass.  It was pretty cool.  There were a few guys windsurfing that we watched for a while (they’re a lot better than me).  It was the perfect windsurfing location: big bay so the waves aren't that bad, lot's of wind, and mountain views.  I also had the best burger I’ve ever had at Spillane’s.  Seriously, best burger ever.