Thursday, August 18
Killarney and London
Killarney!
We weren't sure what to expect, but we discovered the town itself is mainly filled with shops all over the place. Unfortunately when we arrived everything we needed closed at 7, so we were forced to take an early and relaxing evening. Since the grocery store was closed, we ate a crazy "pay as you please" restaurant, which is exactly what it sounds like. Our hostel was great- we stayed in a little attic room that we had to duck to get into.
Since there's not really much to do in or around Killarney besides see the countryside, we had planned on hiking taking up most of our short time there. Weirdly though, it's really hard to find hiking or get to trailheads in the Killarney National Park. On our first day, we ended up on a bus tour of the highly recommended Ring of Kerry with overwhelming views and an underwhelming tour guide/driver. Oddly the whole time we were there our tour guides, hostel, and anyone else made a big deal about telling us about all the hotels we were nearby/passing/not staying at. we also passed through a town which was notable for A) receiving Ireland's 'Tidy Town Award' and B) for hosting a Puck Festival each year where they find a goat in the hills, bring it into town, put in up on a really tall pole, then have a party around it for three days. (The goat is released back into the hills at the end.)
When we got back to the hostel we met Hannah, probably our favorite New Friend of this trip. We went out that night with her and a couple of german girls, and decided we would hear Irish music every night we were there (since like every bar had live music after about 8 every night).
The next day we walked the 3 miles or so to Muckross House (the old Victorian mansion and estate that makes up Killarney's only real tourist attraction) with Hannah and had the most bizarre tour through the house itself. It was delivered via rapid-fire facts, like an inventory of everything in the house and each historical fact of interest (fact of interest: queen victoria visited the house for two days, and they spent six years preparing for her visit. A month before she arrived she wrote a considerate letter saying 'cant wait to be there, please don't anyone go to any trouble on my account.')
After the tour we hiked around Muckross Lake. On the way we met some Israeli guys from Philadelphia who gave us tea from their camp stove as we squatted outside the extremely overpriced tea house on one shore of the lake. We also stopped off (aka hiked up a mountain to) Torc Waterfall, which we found after a bit of confusion with a very small and mildly disappointing waterfall.
At the end of our extremely beautiful and mildly rainy hike, we hitchhiked back to town!!! Made confident by our massive group (three girls instead of two) we decided it was worth a try while we waited for our taxi. It was soooo easy! The first car we hailed stopped, and it was a single, really really nice older woman who was headed straight where we needed to go!
On our last day, we did a combined boat/hike/bike trip through Dunloe Gap, which is a pass between a mountain (Purple Mountain) and a mountain range. We were carried to the bottom of the gap in a small boat, then walked our bikes up a long long hill to the middle of the gap, then biked allllllllll the way down and back into Killarney. It bore some resemblance in theory to the VA Creeper Trail, except it was a lot more work.
After that, we started the long journey home! Wednesday morning we woke up before god, flew to London, and spent a bit of time wandering around near Victoria Station. We saw the Buckingham Palace. It was okay. We also walked around the Ritz London, which was surrounded by the fanciest shops- Gucci, Yves Saint Lauren, Mikimoto, etc etc All the shops where just going in is really out of our price range.
London, as we found the last time we were here, is very hard to figure out and very expensive, but also very full of people more than willing to help you figure it out. We spent a good bit of our time today trying to withdraw money, since most european credit cards apparently have a chip in them (instead of using the magnetic strip system) which means that ours do not work anywhere but at a bank's ATM. This was INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING and a little scary since we had approximately zero cash when we found this out. Other countries had the chip readers too, but we always had some cash or another atm nearby to try, but this time we tried three or four atms and two cash registers before we got it to work.
Thankfully we are now be-cashed and more than ready to fly home tomorrow out of the London Heathrow airport! ALMOST HOME! This will be our last post in Europe! We'll do our best to update with the pictures we missed, and maybe some Reflective Thoughts, but of course we'll be very busy being jetlagged and doing the most satisfying load of laundry anyone has ever known. Thanks for following along (if you have been). It's been a truly amazing trip for so many reasons, and in a way it's hard to believe it's over. We can't wait to see ALL OF YOU- some of you it may take a little longer to get to, but being around people we know and love is one of the things both of us miss the most.
Xoxo
Emily and Leah
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