Road trip part II

I know that my last entry was very short and maybe didn't satisfy your curiosity. Therefore I would like to give you more information about my road trip. Those days on the road made me finally realize that I was in Ireland. Ireland as the country most people see it, the "green island" with lots of sheep and farmers, narrow streets and small houses and rain. With the exception of the latter ;-), this idea is true. Ireland is a beautiful island, very green, very narrow streets and many farmers and sheep. The people are extremely friendly and several times we were offered help when we seemed lost (and sometimes were).

Don't get me wrong, Dublin is a great city and I love it, but capitals and big cities are rarely a true picture of the country and neither Zurich nor Geneva are typical of Switzerland (I know that they are not the capital). Ireland has a beautiful landscape, astonishing coast-lines, cute little towns with picturesque houses and a funny road system. The streets are narrow and have many blind bends but still the sign shows a speed limit of 100! How anyone can drive that fast without loosing control of the car and the road is a mystery (at least for us). Many Irish cars (=locals, not tourists) passed us while we drove and some of them very fast. On the other hand they hardly ever drive faster than 100 on the streets where you COULD drive faster because they are wide, have several lanes and you can actually SEE where you're going, not just guessing what may lie ahead...and the road sign are so small..oculists must make a fortune in this country! The sign are usually are visible two seconds AFTER the turnoff...but hey, we had fun :-). We ended up at nice places, talked to friendly people telling us that we are lost or completely at the wrong place or just smiling knowingly when we turned...and we drove on the left! With one European Union they still can't manage that everybody drives on the same side of the road..it wasn't that difficult actually, just sometimes a little funny we were shouting-drive on the left, after we entered the road or: you are too close to the side, drive more to the right". ..

The trip led from Dublin to Kilkenny where we had our first stop and turned onto the scenic drive, a "nice" route with very small signs, mostly visible after the junctions and many turns. Once in Cashel, we visited the church "Rock of Cashel" and drove onto Cobh, just a little outside of Cork in the South. This was a very nice little town directly on the sea with beautiful houses where we spent the first night.

On the second day we drove through the Ring of Kerry (which is a nice route along the cost-line, a circle starting at Killarney and the streets were sometimes REALLY narrow, especially if there was a lorry crossing...we skipped the town Killarney and drove onto the Dingle peninsula which was one of the highlights of the trip. In Dingle we spent the second night in a hostel and got to spend more money for our dinner in one of the finest fish restaurants of the island as for the night...

As there was no breakfast at the hostel we got to leave really early and managed to see most of the peninsula before the other tourists woke up which was perfect. We passed Tralee and went onto to Tarbert where we took the ferry to Kilrush. It was still early in the day so we headed further north and even got to see the Cliffs of Moher on that day! We spent the night at a small town called Ballyvaughan in a completely new bed & breakfast.

After a "cooked breakfast" with sausages, beans and bacon, we left on the next morning to see the landscape called "burren". A must, as Karin's surname is Burren :-) This landscape looks very lunar as there are just stones. The great variety of plants can only be seen at second glance. But even in this remote area we managed to locate a place to spend money: a perfumery! After "some" shopping we headed for our final destination, the town of Galway. In Galway we spent some hours with shopping (again *lol*), eating and enjoying the sun before we squeezed into our beloved red Nissan Micra called "Ed" for the final hours of our journey back home to Dublin. We returned him safely and hope that his next owners will treat him with the same love and that they might laugh as much as we did while enjoying his company!