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Day 1
It was a cloudy morning of 24th august 2012 (Friday) when we started for our Ireland trip. The weekend being a long one with a bank holiday on Monday we decided to seize the opportunity for a trip to Ring of Kerry on the south of Ireland. Our flight with Ryanair was at 15:20 from Stansted airport in London to Kerry airport in Ring of Kerry reaching at 16:45. Reaching Stansted from Barking was not that smooth as the Easy bus stop in Baker street was not that easy to find. We kept running around until we managed to reach the stop just at the right time for the bus. Ryanair being a budget airline, tried its level best to pull out some money from us at the last moment but without any success. We normally carry backpacks whenever we go on trips. The security officer at the boarding gate wanted to check if ours fit in the dimensions mentioned for free baggage and if not we had to pay. Hence by the time he cleared us, we were late to board the flight.Reaching Kerry we found the cab driver from Mid Kerry cabs holding a placard with my name and waiting for us. The bus timings did not match our flight timings since it was a weekend hence we had taken care to pre-book the cab.
Once out of airport, we saw the beauty of the landscape around us. We were mesmerized by the serene beauty which Kerry unfolded in front of us. We went straight-away to the hotel in Killarney town which we had pre-booked. It was a nice and cozy hotel named Lake lodge guest house at 5 mins distance from the center of Killarney town on Muckross road. Loved the room as soon as we entered it.
Soon we changed and without wasting the day thought of visiting one of the main attractions of Killarney ‘The Ross Castle’.
The walk to Ross Castle was a 40 mins walk through the Castle Road via Killarney National Park. In spite of the continuous showers throughout the walk way, the breathtaking views on either side of the road led us on. We saw the Golf course of Killarney and many houses beautifully decorated on the way. On the funnier side, we even saw plots being sold there and thought how would it be to buy a plot and settle down there 🙂
Soon a welcome board told us that we are entering Killarney national forest. With forest on both sides of the It was raining when we reached there. The castle itself looked deserted with hardly any tourists around. Few jaunty cars were waiting nearby looking for tourists.When we went near the waterside for a few photographs, we were surrounded by huge swarms of mosquito like insects, since we didn’t know what they were we named them ‘Irish mosquitoes’ 🙂
Soon these insects went into our hairs, face hands everywhere and were having a fun time biting us.Quickly we left them behind and went into the Castle.It was amazing to see the way it was built, the well placed canons, the high walls , the pier etc.After taking few photographs, it was again a long walk back to the town center. It was really long this time cause we were tired and hungry by then. The Restaurants and pubs at the town center were almost full which was quite unusual for a small town. Finally we went into a cozy looking restaurant with a good ambiance and ordered for our dinner. Beef stew , Fritters , chips, chicken pizza , Cold drinks and Irish Beer (Guinness) was our huge dinner for the day.After the awesome dinner we were hardly able to move ….but finally managed to somehow reach our hotel on the way we took some photographs of the town center and also visited the church gardens located on the way.
