Killarney National Park

Pictures for both days can be seen at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/76555621@N02/sets/72157631573006420/

WEDNESDAY, September 12th

Ross Castle was our first destination for Wednesday.  We looked around, but decided not to do the tour since the entire castle had been rebuilt almost from scratch.  It did however have an interesting description about what life would have been like in a tower.

Second on our agenda was the Muckross House.  This mansion was surrounded by history – there was even a California couple who purchased the house as a wedding gift for their daughter!  This family eventually donated the house to Ireland as a National Park; almost half of the entire national park was included in this donation!  We went on a great tour though the house – a whole 2 hours!  We actually got to go through 90% of the house, which is much more than normal on a tour!  We even got to see the servants’ hallway with all the summoning bells – the servants knew which room to go to by the sound – that’s over 30 sounds to memorize.

Nest we went off to see the Troc Waterfalls and do a hike up to the top.  There were some great views of the city across the lakes, but the waterfall itself wasn’t as large as expected.

To finish off, we drove farther around the lakes in the National Park of Killarney and walked a bit more to take stunning photos.

THURSDAY, September 13th

We lucked out and continued to have rather great weather – clouds but not much rain..

We started off by going back to Ross Castle to grab a boat through all the lakes to the other side of the National Park.  We were a bit early, so we got to look off at the beautiful lake for a while before climbing into the little motorboat that would then drive us for an hour and a half through 3 lakes.  The scenery was breathtaking.

Upon arriving at the other end of the lakes, we paused for lunch before going and hiking The Gap of Dunloe.  Sounds forbidding doesn’t it?  It is a valley carved by a glacier in the last ice age.  We did the hike backwards and weren’t cure we were going in the right direction as we had seen very few path indicators and didn’t have a good map, but then we reached a crest and looked down to see around 50 horse and buggies climbing up towards us – we were in the right place.  It was a 10km+ hike – over 5 miles.  That doesn’t sound excruciating, but that’s because you aren’t thinking of hiking with my dad and I who take pictures every 5 steps…  It was a great hike.

Once we made it to the other end of the Gap, we grabbed a taxi back to Ross Castle to grab our car.