Castles and Cowpies

Exploring an abandoned castle

The next morning we woke up super early to hit the Ring of Kerry.  The guests last night convinced us that this sight was not to be missed and they were right.  The road was narrow and windy.  We stopped at a local fishery and bought some fish (couldn’t get any fresher), we explored a vacant castle from the 1300s, had lunch in a pub, and did some off road hiking to the top of a hill to get the whole view.  The burger I had at the pub was AMAZING local Irish beef stuffed with bri topped with a tomato and arugula, oohhhhhhhh yea.

That evening we arrived at Laura and Cory’s next job which was with a family where the mother was Irish and the father French.  They had two tweenage girls and they had made a cake to welcome us.  They gave us a tour of their amazing property complete with a hoop house and goats.  We talked over cake and tea about the problems that face youth in Ireland, US and France (alcohol was their largest concern). 

A cowpie surrounded castle

The next morning Maureen and I got up early to hit the road for Dublin (at this point our car smelled like mildew and we couldn’t figure out why).  As we drove north we stopped in Cashel to explore yet another ruined castle (this one from the 1100s).  In my excitement to explore the ruins I stepped in a MASSIVE cow patty (I should’ve been looking out because there were over a 30 cows in the field).  Maureen reacted with great laughter as I tried to remove the shit from my foot and flip flops (now the car would smell even worse)!!!!!  We carried on the road to Dublin and found our hostel dropped off our luggage and went to the rental car agency.  Of course being Sunday it was closed and we continued our adventure to the airport.  Several roundabouts later we arrived there and finally got rid of the car.  We arrived back at our hostel and the smell had followed us to our room (I promptly tossed my sneakers). 

Look who we ran into in Dublin

We then headed out to find dinner in Dublin.  Aside from the bombdiggity burger the food in Ireland had been very disappointing and we were craving a really good meal.  We walked to Grafton street, stopping in an amazing sprits store that sold mini bottles of whiskey from each of Ireland’s counties.  We then made a loop of the area restaurants wanting to make the best choice for dinner.  Boy did we choose well!  We shared a caprese salad with massive stacked tomatoes with generous portions of mozzarella, cured meat with arugula and Parmesan


 and an entree of lamb and hummus.  Amazing, plus they had wine and after endless pints of beer it was pretty awesome.