May 19 Kenmare

Day 11 - Sunday, May 19, 2002

I got to have something other than the traditional Irish breakfast! French toast today. This is a welcome relief to 10 consecutive days of sausage and ham. The groups at breakfast this morning were quite talkative and we all chatted quite a bit. One of the groups had been at the banquet the night before and had noticed us, though we had not noticed them. All in all, it was a pretty amusing conversation.

We were headed for Co. Kerry so we took off towards Limerick. Sunday morning is the time to make this trip. It was very quiet and we experienced very little traffic. We stopped in Adare along the way and walked through the town, stopping in shops and remembering our trip four years earlier. I found a heraldry shop that actually had the O'Beirne name so I ordered a coat of arms from them. Then on to the Killarney area.

This was one of the sunniest days in recent memory. Still lots of clouds, but not much rain. As we were coming into Killarney we decided to take a back road to perhaps get a better view of the mountains. As it turned out, that didn't really work, but we came across a beautiful old graveyard that looked out over the valley. We stopped and took some pictures and then headed into Killarney.

Other than gas, we felt no real desire to stop in town, so we went straight through, having been to Muckross before. The road over the around the lakes is very narrow and twisted, but a beautiful drive. We stopped at the little castle that had been the site of Felicity's famous spill in the mud years before and then again at Ladies view. It was a beautiful day, so we were really able to enjoy it. The only concern is that you have to watch out for the tour buses coming in the other direction. Instead of taking the road into Kenmare at the top of the pass, we went into Sneem.

We had a room reserved for the nights at the Tahilla Cove Guesthouse, about 6 miles east of Sneem and about 10 from Kenmare. This is a wonderful place, but you do pay for it. The price is about double what a B&B runs. It has it's own bar and they serve dinner on many nights. We ended up not eating there, but we certainly availed ourselves of the pub. The owners are wonderful, and the level of service is unmatched. James spent quite a while with us going over the secret places to drive that the average tourist doesn't see. This was worth the splurge.

We had to go into to Kenmare and were instantly reminded of why we liked it so much. It's in a beautiful setting, classic brightly colored buildings and just a friendly atmosphere. You can walk everywhere in the town. We ate at Donovan's pub and had pretty good pub grub. The we walked around the town and went into some shops. While we were there, we heard sudden car horn honking and a great deal of commotion. We though it was a wedding. As it turned out, it was a newly elected servant of the people out the thank his constituents for putting him in office. He's an older gentleman and quite a character. We listened to him rant for a while, because the rally was being held right in front of our parked car! It was all quite amusing. The rally finally broke up and we got to our car for our evening drive. This turned out to be a short trip up the Beara Peninsula. Here we stumbled upon the Inchaquin waterfall. It was beautiful, and we knew we would be back. That evening, we stopped in for a drink at the pub at the Guesthouse. What a great way to end the day.

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