Killarney

I slept in as long as I could this morning before getting up at 7. I went to breakfast with the girl who stayed with Maria and I last night and I've forgotten her name but she has beautiful red hair. Breakfast was in the hotel and it was bread, cereal and fruit. I had a plum, a bagel, and some chunk of wheat.

What are you weetabix...

The wheat thing was weird. I ate it like a granola bar and it wasn't good. Maybe I was suppose to put it in milk.

After breakfast we took our luggage and left the hotel.

I grabbed a second bagel

We got on our bus and I sat near the back with Mia. We mourned for our days of riding in the front seats. Our driver Hugh, who has neck tattoos and sleeves, called out asking where we went and we yelled from the back that we had to sit back here. Sad day for everyone involved really.

Tom the tour guide talked about stuff and I had trouble listening. Without the view the front seats offered, I stared out the window and my mind wandered.

We stopped at a gift store for an Irish coffee. I had no intention of buying a coffee but a lady walked around with a tray handing them out for free. Free is my favorite price. I took a glass and it was very warm and smelled like hot chocolate and coffee's lovechild. It even tasted like hot chocolate and coffee.

Irish coffee

I tasted no whiskey (oh by the way, an Irish coffee is a coffee with whiskey and brown sugar) and that was fine. Everyone loved and raved about the coffee. The shop was seriously expensive with 200 euro sweaters. I left and waited for my group outside.

We next went to a town outside Killarney where they celebrate the Puck Fair. What I took from the Puck Fair, as I learned about it through Tom and reading brochures, is that it's a 3 day party where people pick a goat and clean it up and put a crown on it and parade around town celebrating their new goat king. On the third day they eat the goat (I made that part up). We went to a bog village museum and it was like this outdoor village you could walk around. They had a statue of a goat so I took a picture with it.

He's making me uncomfortable.

I saw a "Romany Caravan" and got excited. Maria said she could see me as a gypsy. Depending on how she feels about them, I bet that meant she either thinks I could be a homeless problem minority or a whimsical fortune teller.

I'll take both compliments

The bog village had lots of little houses to walk inside where there was old furniture to show how people lived in bog village day. It was fun.

They also had Kerry Bog Ponies, which is a native Irish pony. Away from the ponies were Irish wolfhounds. Both dogs and ponies did nothing but sleep so I went to the gift shop and bought 2 postcards to send back home. I will send one to my dad and one to Camin. I don't know how to address a postcard.

We got back on the bus and went to another town and had lunch. I wasn't hungry so I had a tomato and cheese sandwich and bottle of water for 6 euro. I wasn't expecting anything from it but it was actually really good. I didn't take a picture because it was still just a sandwich. But I did get a picture of me.

When in doubt, selfie out.

Back on the bus, we drove by Daniel O'Connell's old home. O'Connell was a famous Irish politician that was all about nonviolence. He even had a church named after him, which is kind of unusual.

Can't believe they used to live without roofs back then.

Then we drove by this pagan circle. Only a fraction of the people on the bus even got to see it and I was one of them. The picture I got was terrible.

Lower right hand corner

We got off the bus in a town called Waterville which was right up next to the ocean. We had some time to walk along the beach and Tom warned the tides might surprise us and to be careful not to get wet.

My tour group kind of stayed together. I don't know why, the beach was pretty much wide open. I went the furthest away and the furthest out than anybody. It didn't smell like the ocean and the waves were more quiet than the pacific but I enjoyed every second.

I climbed out to some rocks and there were snails stuck to them. I tried to pull one off but he was on their pretty tight and I didn't want to rip him out of his shell so I gave up that. Remo is really good at that. He would have been able to get everyone a snail without hurting them.

Let me touch you.

There wasn't much going on at the beach.I did find a little shell and decided to take it home to Remo.

Then I walked off and found some cool green rocks. I took three, one for Cam, Ian and I.

I felt like I should grab a rock for my parents too. I took 2 little rocks for them.

With my new gifts in my coat pocket, I headed back to my group who were a bit ways down the beach. As I got closer, I noticed the people who I thought were in my group were actually old Asian people. My group wasn't even on the beach anymore. There were a couple tour buses that were parked a up the road so I assumed one of them was mine. None were. I was starting to get nervous that everyone was on the bus getting mad that they had to wait for me. But less than 5 minutes later I found my bus. I wasn't the last one on so technically I wasn't late.

We drove more. We are clocking lots of bus time on this trip but it doesn't feel like it. With Tom talking and all the green shrubbery to stare at, I felt entertained.

We saw plenty of sheep and the novelty still hasn't worn off, they're just so precious. At some times it was too foggy for a picture, while other times we saw blue sky. I knew this country was nicknamed the emerald island, but Ireland is seriously green.

Okay, I get it...

We got off the bus around 2:30 at a town called Sneem. There I bought a handmade smores ice cream for 2.50 euros. Ice cream portions are so small here. I know it's actually the other way around. Portions are too big in America. But after a summer of working at an ice cream store and dishing out sizes at least 4 times as big as the one I had, I feel like it's too small.

The town had a statue of this wrestler guy Steve Casey, aka Crusher. Nothing significant about it.

Except on the left hand corner there was something of interest:

Hidden Mickey or a penis?

We left Sneem at 3 for bigger adventures. There was a sheep farm we had plans to see. We were told it would cost 6 euros to shear a sheep and everyone payed up. Once we got to the Kissana sheep farm, we were escorted outside to watch a guy herd sheep with his two border collies. I was really impressed by it, and then I got bored.

Sheep

After we left to go inside to shear a sheep, I stayed back to pet one of the border collies named Flash.

Poor quality picture but that's to be expected of a dog named Flash

The guy said he only used 4 commands with his dogs and he trained them himself. It was very cool.

After that, we went inside a barn and took a seat to watch a guy shave a sheep. It was okay, not crazy fun. They only make 1.60 euro a sheep. It's not priced by wool but by sheep and the industry is at a serious low. None of us got to shear a sheep which made sense and I'm not sure why we were under the impression that we would be doing it ourselves. Silly tourists.

Around the corner of the barn were 3 pens where baby sheep were being kept. It was adorable and I took a million pictures.

Who ewe calling adorable

"Why yes I did get a kiss from a cute Irish"

The little ones would walk up to you and stick their head through the fence. They would nibble on your hands and try to suckle your fingers.

My heart just crapped its pants.

Loves it

One of the mama sheep would try to get between you and her baby, but all of the other moms were cool with you petting their children.

In the last pen was a week old baby. She liked having her head scratched.

Oh my god

Oh mY GOD

It was all so precious and I loved it. I was the very last person out of the baby area and I only left because my group was moving on.

We got back on the bus and left for the Lakes of Killarny. It was a big picture spot and everyone was getting in everyone's way to take their photo. I really didn't think the view was that impressive. It was just more green mountains and a lake far away. But I took several pictures.

I broke this with my leg strength.

Back on the bus, we went to our hotel. We were staying in Killarny at a little place called Glena. The last hotel hadn't been super great. Tom said that was because people in the past had complained about not staying in bed and breakfast, quaint type places. I say that people in the past are stupid. Our hotel was alright. It was back to the four of us in one room which I was happy about. The room was big.

2 singles and a queen

We made Kaitlyn and Mia share the queen. The bathroom was big too. I couldn't get the wifi to work. After hanging out in the room for an hour we went to dinner, which was in our hotel and just around the corner from our room.

Dinner was ham, vegetables, thick fried potato, and something none of us really knew the name of.

Dinner is served

I passed off the meat and potatoes (I only like my potatoes in small, crisp proportions) and ate the vegetables and thing none of us knew what to call. It was free and I wasn't hungry. That's what I keep saying to describe these dinners. If I was hungry, or if I had to pay for a meal like this, I would have been upset.

After dinner we all wanted to go downtown and drink. Maria wanted to go with Tom who was walking some of our group around and pointing out places. I kind of hated the idea of having to be escorted around looking like we were playing follow the leader. But if I didn't wait I would have been going on my own (which was fine by me but would have been considered rude by the other girls). Tom took around 10 of us into town and pointed out the bars and ATMs. After that everyone departed. Maria and I withdrew money from the ATM, I took out 220 euros. Maria, Mia, and I went to a bar called The Grand.

The Grand

We went there because Tom said it was his favorite and they had live music. Everywhere had live music. There were musicians on each corner street. Mia and Maria each had a Guinness because they've never tried one before (little babies, they are) and I had a Bulmers which was a cider. It wasn't crowded but we joined an old guy at his table. He was from Limerick and Maria talked up a storm with him. She is super social, which is awesome because then I can just sit back and not have to make small talk with people I don't care about. He said something about the Guinness they were drinking and she was like "Yeah! We decided to order a Guinness since we're in Ireland and I've never had it before! I love it here, it's so green and pretty!" and I cringed. She just sounded so... I don't know. I need to stop thinking I'm better than everyone else (even though I totally am).

After round 1, I went to the bar for seconds. I met Kaityn up there and we did a shot of Jameson. Then I got a Jameson and ginger with lime. Maria got a a strawberry lime cider that I thought would be gross because I don't like sugary, sweet drinks. But it was really good. It tasted like liquid candy. Extremely sweet, but I drank most of it and tossed her a couple euros since she had bought it.

Round two

The music was good! It was traditional Irish music with five or six people sitting in the corner playing their instruments. At one point I had a missed call from my mom and my phone was acting weird and said I had a voicemail. I couldn't remember my voicemail password so I never got to hear it. After a wrong guess the voicemail disappeared.

We left the bar and stumbled over to another bar called Laurels pub. There was some wedding there a million years ago and that's why it's famous or historic or whatever. The girls didn't know what to drink so I ordered 3 baileys on ice. They said they'd never had baileys before. I internally let out a huge sighed. I externally said "You'll like it, it's like chocolate milk." They both liked it and we drank with some girls from our tour group. It was a lot of fun.

We left and walked around Killarney. We were laughing so hard at nothing and it was hard to walk. Mia was about to pee her pants so we had to pop into another bar for the bathroom, it was the funniest thing.

We wandered over to a pizza place and bought a veggie pizza. We ate it on the way back to the hotel then we stumbled to our room. I fell onto the bed and was out. I have no idea what time it was.