Today was sleep-as-late-as-you-want day!! We woke up around 9:30 and took our time getting on the road as we didn't have much planned for once. Just a day to enjoy the sites wherever we went. Our road trip took us through Killarney National Park which we later found out used to be owned by a family that later donated the land and it became the first national park of Ireland, pretty ridiculous! It was a little overcast and kinda a wet day so it worked out that we were going to be in the car. We stopped along the way at Ladies' View as well as a couple of other scenic spots on the Ring of Kerry.
We ended up in Kenmare for lunch. The town was a really nice place to walk around, cute shops but less commercialized than most of the places we'd seen so far. Lunch was great and afterwards Linda and I found a store that carried the cutest clutch purses so we had to stop and treat ourselves! Kenmare is also located on the water (Kenmare Bay) and is trendy yet charming - definitely a place to go back to and maybe stay a night!
After Kenmare, we drove a bit more along the Ring of Kerry route in order to see more of the bay and pass through other tiny towns. We circled back towards Killarney after going through Sneem since it was either turn around then or drive for the rest of the day and that option just didn't seem overly appealing to the group. Made a little detour on the way to stop and play with a bunch of sheep and so many cute little lambs!!
On the way back we stopped and walked to Torc Waterfall in Killarney National Park. There were stone steps going all of the way up Torc Mountain, which Kara and I walked partway up but didn't make it to the top because it was muddy and we weren't sure how long it would take!
Next stop was a tour of Muckross House and gardens which Brian Manoy had highly recommended. And for good reason too, it was insanely beautiful, hard to believe that it was once someone's home. All of the chandeliers in the house were from Waterford crystal which is a few hours east of Cork. The tour was quite interesting (even for the guys, I think) and it reminded me of touring one of the Newport mansions.
When the tour ended it was getting late in the afternoon so we headed back to the Arbutus where we split up for an hour or so. The girls went walking around town to get some souveniers and more importantly - ICE CREAM!!! We had seen Murphy's ice cream the night before but didn't have a chance to get anything, so glad we didn't make that mistake twice. They had wicked good flavors (chocolate whiskey for me, cookies for kara) and a hot chocolate menu with about 6 choices...but we didn't want to completely spoil our appetites so we just stuck with the ice cream!
Michael & Kevin went for a drink while we were strolling around looking for a dinner spot. We all met up and went to dinner at Scott's, which was right around the corner form the hotel. The Liverpool/Manchester game was going on so that was exciting even though Manchester lost and there were some pretty ticked fans in the bar area!!
Decided it would be best to not get locked out of the hotel again so we went to Buckley's bar which was conveniently located right in our hotel. The place was rather deserted but we made the most of it and taught Linda how to play A**hole (censored for all audiences, haha) - which we modified with British Parliament titles...nice touch Kara :). After a few games and a lot of laughs, everyone seemed tired so we called it a night fairly early....only one more day of fun left, booo!
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