Day 4 - The Ring of Kerry

After a less than restful night's sleep for me - though Bill didn't seem to be bothered - (our room turned out to be over the nightclub which rocked until 2:30 am!) we headed out on a gorgeous morning for our tour of the Ring of Kerry.  Today we had a driver in addition to our guide Mal.  The 125 mile route took us first to view the Gap of Dunloe.  We passed by a cottage with a traditional thatched roof on the way to a stop for some shopping and some Irish coffee.

It's 5:00 somewhere right?  Outside of the shop there were many plants including this Foxglove.

We passed some Ogham stones, erected in honor of folks who have passed on.

We then stopped for some photos along the Dingle Peninsula.  So gorgeous!

We made a stop for lunch at The Moorings, a restaurant in Portmagee.  

Then on to visit the Skellig Experience.  The Skellig Islands are basically two huge rocks out in the Atlantic that were inhabited by Monks who carved over 600 steps into these rocks and inhabited the island in bee hive huts made of rock.  You can barely make out the rock island off the end of the peninsula in this picture.

At another spot along the ring where we stopped for a photo op there was a honey vendor (we were told that you could also ask him for some clear honey... that is really moonshine ... but we did not test that out), a gentleman playing music and tapping his foot on a piece of tin, and a man who had some adorable baby sheep and a baby red deer.  They were 2 and 3 weeks old.  

I have made it a cause to pet a puppy a day in Ireland... and I've been successful.  This was my victim today - so cute!

Then onward where we saw peat being dried to be used for fuel.  We also as you can expect saw a lot of sheep, many with colored paint on them.  It's basically a way of marking the sheep so you know who's they are.  Our guide told us that when they send out the rams they put a different color paint on their underbelly so that when they... shall we say date a lady friend.... she too is marked with his color.

We also saw an official leprechaun crossing!

The final part of the Ring of Kerry drive was extremely curvy and very narrow.  Wow.  Glad we weren't driving it ourselves!

Tomorrow... the Cliffs of Moher!