Killarney Day 1

Technically, our first day in the Killarney (Cill Airne in Gaelic) area was the day before, on the 15th when we flew in, but we were only there for the evening and a night of Irish music in a pub, so we'll begin with our first full day of bicycling instead. The route we took is marked by the yellow line on this map.

View Kerry in a larger map

So, Killarney is located in the southeast corner of Ireland in County Kerry. It's a small inland town which backs up to Killarney National Park, which is a hilly region made up of three lakes, some rivers, and plenty of forest and is probably the main reason we chose to visit. Simply put, the area is stunning as our pictures will fail to show fully, but hopefully you'll get the idea.

We picked up two hybrid trekking bikes the morning of the 16th and the woman at the bike shop (O'Sullivan's on the map) gave us some excellent advice on routes, which we followed to a T. So, as instructed, we headed out with a lunch packed to do a loop around Muckross Lake (or Loch Mhucrois). The pictures below chronicle the trip.

This is Muckross Abbey and our first stop. There was absolutely no one here and the entire abbey was accessible. You could even go up some stairs to the second story. In fact, we considered eating our sandwiches here, but out of respect for the likely bland and meager meals the monks ate here, we saved our mozzarella, tomato and pesto sandwiches for later.

Here's a picture of our bikes from inside the walls of the abbey. A lovely scene, don't you think?

We then carried on to Muckross House which was a rather large estate with some beautiful gardens overlooking the lake. We had our lunch here, on this incredibly well manicured lawn. In the distance you can see a horse pulling a jaunting car. These things are everywhere. As vehicles aren't allowed in the park, these jaunting cars are used to take tourists around on the many trails (for a fee, of course). Of course, they leave road apples for bicyclists to be wary of, but that's all part of the experience.

This is the view of Muckross House from the same lawn we ate our lunch on. Hey, that rhymes!

This was taken in the gardens behind Muckross House, which are expansive. I don't know the name of these big purple flowers, but they were almost as pretty as the chica standing next to them.

Apparently, the Irish knew I was coming and put signs up to warn people. Actually, we're still not sure what this sign means, but we do have some hypotheses: 1) Beware of people with broken windshields as they may not be able to see you and you'll have to dive out of the way, 2) beware of men with briefcases who are known to break windshields, 3) Beware of men who break windshields and run off with briefcases, and 4) Make sure not to drop your briefcase when running from vehicles with broken windshields.

This was taken from a bridge where Lough Leane (Loch Lein) and Muckross Lake meet.

And finally, towards the end of our loop we stopped at Torc Waterfall, named for Torc Mountain directly beside it, I'm sure; what Torc means, however, I do not know. Again, the view was simply stunning, and the waterfall was nice too (if you can't tell, it's Derek typing this post).