Month: June 2026

Greetings from Killarney

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I’ve not done a good job keeping up with (documenting) the journey, but there should be some time in the next few days.

Yesterday we left Dingle and traveled about 90 minutes to Killarney. In spite of the move, it was a fairly restful day as we had no planned excursions and (shocker) it was gloomy, cold, and raining. So we stayed inside our hotel(s) and rested up for today’s big journey, the Ring of Killarney.

Our penultimate hotel, The Cahernane, is one of the older hotels in Killarney and a grand one with quite a story. Here’s a picture I took of the hotel during a few minutes between rain showers. And our view toward the mountains is the title photo above. It’s a perfect example of our motto since entering Ireland: “Wow, I bet that’s beautiful on a sunny day.”

The view from our hotel in Dingle (The Pax House) was wonderful, when we could see it (Wow, I bet that’s beautiful on a sunny day.) Vast swaths of pastureland and ocean. The main sitting room in the hotel was comfy with dozens of plush chairs from which to enjoy the view. Jules the dog ruled the room – he greeted every guest and had his own special chair. The Pax House owner, John, clearly loves his dog and has done an incredible job decorating the place with artwork from all over the world. I can’t recommend the Pax House strongly enough, though one would be wise to book it 9-12 months in advance. We learned that the hard way. It fills up for an entire tourist season within days of John opening the website for bookings. Example view below.

We did have a great day being guided around the perimeter of the Dingle peninsula by our guide Mossy, short for Maurice. In 4+ hours, we took in the Conor Pass, some 5000 year old stone ruins, an 1100 year old church partially destroyed by Cromwell (they really hate Cromwell in Ireland; he was that era’s version of Convict Donny), a cool beach and giant seascape, some pre-Christian-era standing stones with Gaelic writing…quite a lot. Mossy had a final surprise for us when he took us to a standing stone in a church/graveyard, and told us it was the only “marriage stone” in all of Ireland. He showed us how placing your fingers in the top hole of the stone and reciting vows was the way the Irish had their marriages “written in stone”, and challenged us to do that for our 25th. We did, and it was a memorable moment. I signed up for another 25. Here’s the stone at Kilmalkedar and a reference.

There are too many pictures to illustrate all the things we saw, but I do like these two pictures of the wild western Ireland seascape. Turns out that Ryan’s Daughter was filmed in this area back in the 70’s, and I remember seeing that movie with my parents back in 1970. My mom was mortified that she had brought me to a movie with some spicy scenes, though I’m sure they were tame by today’s standard. The beach in the photo below was featured in the film.

Today we took a long rainy drive around the Ring of Kerry, and I’ll write that up tomorrow. I’m at least a day behind on documenting.

Wind, rain, fog, and a Snug Room

jeffcnicholsLeave a comment

It’s Tuesday, June 2, even though my WordPress account thinks it’s June 1. My Mac has been wonky since I fired it up this morning – it rebooted itself unexpectedly, so…we’ll see what’s up. It’s mostly working now.

The last 24 hours after arriving in Ireland have been interesting. We arrived in a foggy, driving rain that only got worse as we were driven toward the coast and our hotel, the Armada House. I checked the weather and the outlook for our entire stay is/was the same – rain, fog, etc. Our first impressions of Ireland were a bit rough.

The Armada House was first class, though we were only there for about 12 hours. We had a meal across the street at the Armada Hotel – great seafood, as expected from a North Atlantic island. The next morning we had a short drive up the western coast of Ireland to the Cliffs of Moher, an allegedly beautiful sight. We couldn’t see it much at first, as the fog was in, thick and cold. Not conducive to sightseeing. Here’s a selfie and what we saw of the Cliffs.

It was cold and windy. Of course.

We decided to leave and visited the shops toward the entrance. Just as we were leaving, it cleared up a bit. Of course. So here’s a slightly better view of the Cliffs that we got by hustling back the quarter mile to the view.

After that we had a looooong 3.5 hour drive from Moher to Dingle, where we are in the middle of a 2-night stay at Pax House. Pax House was advertised by our travel agent as the highlight of our two week vacation, so we had high expectations. When we arrived, the House met expectations, but our promised room did not. The travel agent messed up and booked us what is politely referred to as a “Snug Room”, a tiny room without a view, underground ( a basement). It was a shock, to say the least, given what we paid and what the travel agent knew. I had a few tense go-arounds with the agent, and we’ve got it mostly sorted out by now. We’re still in the Snug Room, but we have some significant compensations/reconciliations for that. I did pretty well not letting this setback ruin even a day of our vacation.

Today we had a great tour around the Dingle peninsula. I’ll post about that later.