How many words for beautiful can we think of?

This weekend, I went on a guided tour of the Ring of Kerry. It was a trip provided by UCC that had come highly recommended by previous students and was absolutely worth doing. I saw sooooo many beautiful sights and had a great time. Definitely one of the best weekends so far.

On Friday we left from Cork at 2:30 with a group of about 40 people. I had originally signed up for the trip with just Julia and Rochelle, but the weekend ended up including their roommate Bethany as well, which rounded off the group quite nicely. It had been about 3 hours when we stopped at our first destination, the Kerry Bog Village Museum. It’s a village that is set up as it was in the time of the famine, the 1800’s. They also had some very oddly sized animals; the tallest dogs in the world and the smallest horses. It was sorta funny how oddly sized they were :P It seemed like we could almost ride the dogs and that the horses were almost too small to ride. After that we got back on the bus and made our way to the town we were staying in, Cahersiveen. It was lovely J We were fed wonderful dinners all weekend and the fact that it was an actual hotel put it up a notch from anywhere else we’ve stayed this trip.

The highlight of that night (and one of my favorite parts of the trip) was learning Ceili dancing. For those of you who don’t know, Ceili (pronounce Kaylee) dancing is like an Irish form of square dancing. We learned three dances with similar steps. Once we’d learned the steps they just started playing and those who got it started, and those who didn’t were dragged along with the beat. Since the partners switched around so much, I encountered almost everyone on the trip for at least one round of the dance. Everyone was just laughing and bumbling along and it was tons of fun J We all ended the night sweating and tired with smiles on our faces.

The next day was our busy day. We were off and on the bus, usually given less than an hour at each site as we made our way around the peninsula of Kerry. We spent most of the time on Valentia island, which is off the northwestern coast of Kerry. We started by going to see some baby calves J they were very cute and sucked on my fingers looking for milk. We had gorgeous weather for most of the weekend and it mostly only rained when we were either inside or on the bus. We were very lucky on that account. After the calves, we hiked up a mountain on the only paved road that goes to the top of the mountain. It was a straight shot to the top but it was an incredible view. Just…so beautiful. Bethany said “It’s so beautiful” so many times that she got sick of it so when we got on the bus we brainstormed synonyms for beautiful. It was….gorgeous, marvelous, wonderful, breathtaking, incredible, grand, lovely.

From the island of Valentia, we could see two other islands out to sea called the Skellig islands. They’re the western most islands until you reach America. In the middle ages, Monks rowed out 8 miles to these islands and built a monastery on these islands that are really just big rocks sticking out of the sea. The monastery still stands today. We couldn’t go out because the ferries don’t go at this time of year but we went to the museum. After that, we stopped at a slate quarry with a grotto to Mary in it. We were told we could keep a piece of slate, so I picked one up. I decided to start a collection of rocks, so began picking them up at other places too. We continued driving around the island and it was the most incredible view. We stopped at a beach, but it was drizzling and cold so we didn’t stay long. Then we finally went back to the restaurant for lunch. We had covered a lot of ground by lunchtime.

After lunch we went to a round fort that also looked out over much of the island. It was cool to climb up the walls and walk around the top. We then had the choice of going to visit a castle and walking back (about 45 minutes) or of skipping the castle and catching the bus. I was super tired but the other girls wanted to see the castle and I decided to go with them. The castle was cool but the walk home was long and rainy… we got chocolate and a nap when we got back so I was just grand J then there was dinner and a talk on Gaelic football, which is like soccer but you can use your hands too. After that was a table quiz in which I sang rolling in the deep for a prize; it was fun but I messed it up, of course :P

Sunday, we woke up and got to hold lambs J the one I held was only 4 days old and it was adorable J then we got on the bus and headed back to Cork, with a few stops on the way. First, to Derrynan house, which is the house of Daniel O’Connell, a man who was very helpful to the emancipation of Catholics in Ireland. Then a waterfall and more marvelous sights along the way. We also stopped at Muckross house, a huge mansion with sprawling grounds. We sat down by the lake and it reminded me of Lake Sag. It was the same shape and had a jut of land where the chapel would stand. It was restful and beautiful. Then we were back on the bus and headed to Cork.

The weekend was much like this telling of it. I grew really tired by the end of the day and paid less attention to it. It probably didn’t help that I was coming down with something and so was tired from that as well. Each stop was well worth the effort, and they did a really good job of mixing up the types of things we did at each stop. Despite my tiredness, it was still an amazing weekend with incredible sights. I would do it again in a heartbeat <3