Southern Ireland (Part 3) 2010

My Possie's in Kilkenny

Drombeg Stone Circle

When we left the hotel, Nicole was on a mission to find Drombeg Stone Circle, also known as Druid's Altar which was supposedly not far from our hotel.  With Mike driving and Nicole navigating, we were on a mission to find it, and I'm not sure why, but we were surprised when we ended up lost......AGAIN!  Now, don't get me wrong, being lost in Ireland is a good thing!

Blarney Castle

The stone circles are so interesting to me.  I was really excited when Nicole told me that she wanted to go find the circle, because I didn't know that there were any close by in the area we were at, but I have spent a lot of quality time reading a book series called The Outlander by Diana Gabaldon which is based around a stone circle in Scottland.  Needless to say, it was really cool to be in an actual stone circle.

Southern Ireland (Part 2) 2010

"Ballycarbery Castle Rewind!"

Something that is never hard to find in Ireland are abandoned castles!  As I mentioned before, It's been a few years since I went on this trip, so the dates and times of some of the events are a little rusty.  I forgot a VERY important part of our trip on my last blog.   Our accidental Irish castle exploration.   

At some point before or during our drive through the Ring of Kerry, we were aimlessly driving through some random backs roads looking for who knows what, and stumbled upon our first castle ruins..........Ballycarbery Castle!

I can still remember when we first saw it from the road.  We were probably about 3 miles from it, but when the first one of us saw it and pointed it out to the others in the car, we started screaming and bouncing up and down in our seats like a bunch of 12 year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert....sadly, I'm not making this up!

Southern Ireland (Part 1) 2010

CURB!!

I heard from a friend of mine, who also happens to be my travel agent, that the best way to see Ireland is to plan nothing and just wing it.  So that is exactly what we did. When a travel agent who works on commission tells you not to pre-book something, you know you can trust his advice because now he is losing money.  Best advice ever!  If you ever need a travel agent, let me know and I'll hook you up with a great one!

Who's driving????

We flew into Galway on what Nikkiy refers to as "a toy plane with a lawn mower engine".  The only thing we had planned other than that flight, was a rental car.  No hotels, no mapped out drive, NADA!!  First order of business........pile all 5 people and their luggage into this tiny "SUV" and learn to drive on the wrong side of the road....or at least the airport parking lot!

 After a LOT of screaming and a whole bunch of accidental shrub trimming, we were off.....until we hit the first roundabout!  Galway is a very small town.  Not exactly hard to find your way around in, but poor Nicole had Mike navigating, and three backseat drivers screaming "CURB" for the first 45 minutes of the drive.  I think we got lost at least five times before we found our way to the city center of Galway.  At some point, I stopped watching because being on the wrong side of the road was freaking me out!