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

Dublin

(preamble: Okay so obviously we didn't get around to pictures (alas!) but they will go up eventually.)


Since we got there so early, we had plenty of time to get a little lost, find and check into our hostel, head  out to find lunch,  finish just in the nick of time to join a free walking tour, and end with a very early but very well priced and quintessentially Irish dinner. It rained (misted, really) on and off the whole time, but our tour guide was really enthusiastic and everything was totally worthwhile. 

Having gotten our general exploring out of the way, we had plenty of time the next day to dawdle out the door, see the Trinity Library (with the Book of Kells!), the Decorative Arts Museum, Kilmainham Gaol   , and wander around looking for sweaters before coming back and making dinner (a progress augmented by free food we kept getting handed- most excellent). 

The Book of Kells  was pretty neat-o. It's got such incredibly minute details... it's hard to understand how they even achieved such tiny fine lines.  There's a really good exhibition surrounding it too, and the ticket also got us into the old Trinity Library, aka the Hogwarts library. Dublin is a very book-centered city- besides the Book of Kells, we also visited the Chester Beatty Library (an extensive and amazing private  book collection made public), and a printing museum. We didn't even touch the writer's museum or any of the stuff surrounding the famous Dublin authors (James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, etc etc) 
Of course, we also did do the required bits of any Dublin visit, which are: go to the Guinness Factory, go to pubs, drink drink drink. 
The Guinness Factory was all right- we went a mere three hours before closing, so multiple exhibits were closing by the time we got to them. We did get our complimentary pint of Guinness in the 'gravity bar', from which we had a 360' view of Dublin which was cool. After sampling Guinness (verdict: good stuff) we went on to a couple different bars to make a night of it, and got little sampler trays of both whiskey and beer. We even made a little comparison chart (not pictured here). In short, whisky is basically poison, Emily still doesn't like beer, and Leah, though pleased with our samples, is still searching for the perfect beer. A good time was had by all, especially after we met some native dubliners (and one Grecian woman) and helped them celebrate a birthday. Our new friends were in a little group of four, and it turned out that two had studied animation in college, and one is now a real-life artist (and bartender). We even swapped websites!!! (Frankhague.blogspot.com if you want to see his, and herrsuite.tumblr.com if you want to see mine)

The next morning we got ourselves woozily up, out the door, and to the train station just in time to watch our train drive away without us. No worries though, we successfully got ourselves to Killarney, just a few hours later than expected.