Ooo, Look at that Random Castle

I have mentioned before that I really like having the car. That is true, with two small caveats.
Caveat 1) it might be the death of me. One of the nice things about the car is that I get to see the countryside as I travel. One of the bad things about the car is that I keep looking at the countryside or a random castle. I keep having to remind myself to look forward, so that I don't miss a turn in the road, which happens frequently. I have driven close to 900 kilometers (560 miles) and I think that two of them have been straight. Wish me luck.

Caveat 2). I am pretty sure that the little woman who lives in my GPS hates me. Any time that I try to enter a destination, it takes almost as long as the drive itself. The display is really small, and I have ogre fingers, so some mistakes are understandable. But sometimes I will push a letter, let's say S, and it will register an L, or maybe even a 6. And the second letter always takes at least ten seconds to appear. She also likes to play funny tricks on me. My first day, she decided to move the icon of the car off of the road, a major non-new looking highway, and show me driving in blank space. And yesterday, she took me through Kilarney, which isn't bad. It looked like a nice town. The only problem is, the Irish Open is taking place in Kilarney, so half of the country is there. And my little guide took me right down the same road as all of the golf traffic. Again, I could forgive her, I am sure she is not up on all of the latest golf news, but when I looked at the map to try and find a way around all of the traffic, I realized that I should have never gone to Kilarney in the first place. I bought an atlas today, don't tell her.

On to the exciting things that I have done and seen. I am going to try to be more specific in my posts about names of places. I will also be adding an interactive map so you can follow along and click on important links and images from my trip. Only one of those things is really going to happen. I will give you a hint to help you decide which one it is: I can't even upload my own pictures at this point.

I have seen some of the extremes in Ireland's history over the last two days. I had a wonderful tour in Kinsale that showed the events leading up to the end of the clan system in Ireland. There were only three of us on the tour, so the guide took us for an extended trip in his car. It was really cool. From Kinsale I started my trip around the Ring of Kerry, a scenic route around a peninsula. I got to drive through a flock of sheep, while nervously trying not to drive over a flock of sheep.

One stop on the ring was called the Muckross house. This was a restored Victorian mansion that was just amazing. The size and the expense of this place was staggering. The family was a typical Victorian family, servants should not be seen, and children should not be heard, and the house was designed to accommodate both of these beliefs. They had a special wing just for Queen Victoria who visited them. Her two day stay, for which she gave a six year heads up, lead to the families eventual bankruptcy. Take that snooty Victorians.

On the same property they had recreations of traditional farms. You could walk down a country lane and visit farms of varying sizes to see what they would have been like. They ranged from a small single room farm all the way up to an expansive farmhouse for a more successful farmer. Each house had people inside who were working and answering questions. Some of the women were even making traditional breads to sample. They were also burning peat in the fires, which has a very distinct, and comforting smell to it. So, if any of you get a large brick of mud in the mail, just know it is from me. Because I care.

My final extreme was a glimpse into the monastic history of Ireland. While the rest of Europe was taking a break from learning and thinking, Irish monks were working away to read and copy and write as much as they could. I went to the remains of the monastery on an island called Skellig Michael. All I can say is that these monks were nuts. First, it was a nine mile trip out into the ocean just to get there. I was soaked and slightly cranky when I got there, and I didn't have to row at all. Second, they built their monastery way up at the top of this mountain. They had to carve out over 600 steps to get, "just the right spot."And then they did two more times, in case they wanted to come up the back steps. And once they finally got up there, they had to construct these little huts out of rock, plus a system to catch water because there is none, and try to figure out how to grow food on a rock. It was amazing. Now it houses about a billion puffins. That might be a slight exaggeration. This was one of the places that I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint at all.

I also went to the beach, which is right across the street from my b&b, and I found a jellyfish. Those don't fit the extremes motif, but I thought that you should know.

Well, that's all that I have to say about the last couple of days. I have not heard any complaints about rambling, so I will assume that everyone is ok with the length of these posts, or has stopped reading