Day 25 - Europe 2010

Happy birthday to me!  It came – the day I would turn 27 on the 27th!

We had nothing specific plan today.  Originally I had planned to explore more of the park, which would certainly be lovely, but I was concerned, with us having no car, that I might not be able to fit in both the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula unless I tackled one today.  So we headed out to search our options.

We found a tourist office and asked about it.  We thought we might rent a car just for the day but the car rental place was closed because it’s Sunday.  But there were three different bus tours leaving for either the Ring of Kerry or the Dingle Peninsula at 10:30, in just about twenty minutes!  We thought that might be our best option so we went to the nearest one and hopped on the bus for the Ring of Kerry, costing about $65 for the both of us.

We were both a little sleepy but I wasn’t about to pay for a bus tour so I could sleep my way through it.  Good thing!  It was gorgeous!  We were passing these green mountains – you couldn’t fit more green on them, they were green to the max – and incredible views of valleys, lakes, and the ocean!  Whoa.  You should have seen me.  I was the only one on that bus who was going from one side to the other taking pictures out the windows.  Hey, maybe it got annoying – it wasn’t that often – but I didn’t care.  I paid for this tour and gosh darn it, it’s my birthday, I can do what I want!

So we made a few stops along the way, mostly to take pictures of some incredible views.  A huge plus was the weather.  It was supposed to be rainy but we had mostly clouds and that’s all.  Sometimes it was even sunny!  So I was thrilled for that and the opportunities to take good photos.

The best stop was at a farm where this cute old shepherd guy showed us how his border collie dogs herd his sheep.  It was so cute, these two dogs were just laying there on the grass and the guy made this whistle sound and all of a sudden one dog leapt up and scaled this steep hill to the top where the sheep were and brought them on down.  Then the shepherd made another whistle and the dog stopped and plopped down on the ground.  I was amazed that the dog was so quick to respond, that he ran up the hill so fast, and that the other dog didn’t leap up to join him.  Once the sheep came down, the shepherd showed us a lot of other calls and had the dogs move the sheep from side to side and even separate a few of them out.  He had six sheep, for example, and then made a series of whistles to have both dogs separate the shape into three pairs.  It was very impressive.

He was very good at explaining everything too.  He starts training the dogs at about four months or so and it takes about a year and a half to train them.  He said he doesn’t use a reward system or they would leave the job.  Wow, explain to me how you can get a dog to be so obedient without a bone on the other end!  He said it’s in their nature to herd though so I guess that works out.  He also said that each dog has his own whistle sound for the different commands.  That makes sense so he can tell one to go left and the other to go right.

After the demonstration, which was so fun and really amazing, he showed us some of his sheep.  He has a bunch of them in a little pen to kind of show off the different types from around the world so it was interesting to see the variety.  One sheep, he said was from the Middle East I think, had two sets of horns, one set going out to the side and the other set going down around his face.  That was different!

So that stop alone was worth the whole excursion and definitely the highlight of the tour, besides the incredible views all along the way.  We did have another exciting stop for lunch at a place called Waterville.  We got off the bus and the driver told us we had 50 minutes to eat and come back.  He recommended a place just outside his stop but we checked in and, as expected, it was more than we wanted to pay.  So we thought we would just find a grocery store.  We did, but it was tiny and the food there was pretty expensive.  We had few options at too high an expense so we figured we would keep looking.

We found a little place just outside the store that was honestly just as expensive as the first place but the menu looked good and I asked the lady if we would have enough time to eat there.  She said we had “loads of time,” so we sat down and I ordered two appetizers: chicken wings and potato skins.  They were very good but somehow the time was ticking by so fast that we ended up having to shovel our food down and weren’t able to enjoy it as much as we would have liked.  Nick was bummed to have to hurry with his fish and chips especially.

We finished up with just about five minutes to get back to the bus.  As we approached, we saw that the bus had its blinker on ready to head out.  OH NO!  The driver must have seen us in the mirror though and waited for us to get on.  As we sat down, the guy next to us said, “I thought he was going to leave you behind.”  We had messed up on our timing and that we had arrived ten minutes later to Waterville than we did.  So we were very lucky that the driver had waited as long as he did, about eight minutes, for us idiots to get back.  Otherwise our day would have turned out much differently!

We ended our tour going around the National Park where we had spent our time the day before.  Some of the best views of the tour were in this area.  What a place!  It made me want to explore it even more.

We got back at 5:00pm and went back to the hostel before heading out again into the little village of Killarney.  After hitting up an internet café – our hostel has no internet, unfortunately, though it is very cute – we had to figure out what to do for dinner.  All I wanted for my birthday dinner was a stack of yummy waffles with strawberries and cream, but that wasn’t happening.  The grocery store here was limited and all you would get at a restaurant was more European food at European prices.  So I spent my birthday dinner at… McDonalds.  Pretty sad but it was actually good and didn’t cost $30.

I thought it would be fun to see a movie so we went and saw Letters to Juliet, which was predictable but cute.  We went home and played cards before going to bed.  I told Nick it didn’t at all feel like my birthday, with no phone calls or singing or parties or presents.  But at least it was a good day with good weather so I am not complaining.  And hey, I’m in Ireland!

PHOTOS:

This was one of our first stops.  What's fun is that you will see these green hills and all these little white dots all over them.  The white dots are all sheep, as you can see here on this hill in the background.  And that dog with the man, her name is Daisy.  I pet her, of course.

I had to be very selective about the photos I post because there are too many scenic ones.  I got this bridge as we passed by on the windy road.  Always the primary color of any picture in Ireland is GREEN!

Before the little demonstration started, one of the dogs was rolling around on the grass.  He may work hard but he's still a dog after all!

Here is one of the dogs herding the sheep, going wherever the shepherd whistles him to.

The sheep come down the hill and both dogs plop down on the grass as soon as they are commanded to do so.

At the end, he had the dog herd the sheep up back the mountain.  But on the way up, the dog kept looking back like, "Do I keep going?  All the way up?  A little more?"  That's what he's doing here.

It was cool to see the variety of sheep.  I liked the thicker guy on the left.

Here is the guy I described with his very unique set of horns.  He was butting a few of the other sheep around.

Once we got around one side of the peninsula, we found the other side to be a bit more windy and foggy.  Nick and I were both captivated by this scene, we wanted so bad to go and explore!

This was an interesting river at a town we stopped at near the end of the tour

Again, I am trying to capture the incredible view - the scenery, not me - and I just cannot do it.  You really just have to be there in order to appreciate this vast expanse of wild greenness.

Here we are looking out over the National Park of Killarney where we enjoyed our exploration the day before.

One final look over Killarney National Park before heading back to town to end our tour.

OK so funny story about these things.  When we were getting our lunch in Waterville, we stopped at that grocery store and decided to get a goodie.  I got this packet of individually wrapped "wagon wheels" because none of the goodies were familiar to us and this sounded similar to another goodie I like.  Well, they are disgusting.  It's like a crust with marshmellow inside and chocolate on the outside.  Sounds normal but the crust part is like cardboard.  So Nick and I were just laughing about these things at the end of the day.  Nick said, "It's made of REAL wagon wheel, and we stuff it with marshmellows too!"  Then we saw the tag line on the packaging, "You have to grin to get it in."  Nick laughed at that and said, "You have to frown to get it down."  LOL!!!  So here are our wagon wheels all lined up and ready to go.