Wanderung 34

We meet Barbara and Christy

We felt it was time to head South to Limerick as we wanted to meet Jerry's cousin Barbara and Christy, her husband, who live there with their two daughters. We had warned them we were coming, but we had been vague about the exact day as we really weren't sure ourselves. As it turned out, we were delayed by Linda's injury and hospital stay, so today was the first feasible day we could drive down to meet them.

Both Christy and Barbara still work, and it turned out that they had to work Saturday evening but were available that afternoon, so we hustled out of the Elite B&B right after breakfast and headed southwards on the motorways (US: Interstate highways).

While we had motorways, we could keep up a steady 110 kph, and so we arrived in Limerick far sooner than I had feared. That gave us enough time to visit Barbara and Christy in their home before going out to lunch with them. Jerry certainly does have some nice relatives in Ireland and I can see why he sometimes just flies over to visit his family.

The advantage of visiting their home was a nice informal chat in their dining room, where I also got to know this charming couple, plus being able to view the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle on their TV. But some gender differences did quickly become apparent: All the females, in particular, including their grown daughter Xherona (pronounced 'Sherona', and she teaches Irish in the local school), were glued to the TV set to catch every nuance of the ceremony, while Jerry, Christy, and I remained in the dining room chatting over guy things like the pros and cons of owning a Prius, and watching the wedding folderol from afar.

Afterwards, we repaired to a really nice restaurant and pub nearby that served excellent meals and, of course, Guinness beer. We chatted for a couple of hours before it was time for us to hit the road again and continue down to Killarney in the southwestern corner of Ireland. We briefly had a motorway out of Limerick to the southwest, but then we returned to the typical, 2-lane Irish highway with the rather unpredictable changes in shoulders, pavement, curves, and transits through small towns and villages. That is charming driving, but slow, but we had left enough of a cushion that we still made it to Killarney before 5 pm, when I suspected the Information Center would close for the day (which was correct).

We wanted to locate in Killarney for 2 nights so that we would have a complete day free to drive the Ring of Kerry loop road around a very scenic, rugged peninsula of Ireland that juts out into the North Atlantic. As we crested some hills just before dipping into the valley in which Killarney lies, I got a unique view of both the barren, rounded hills of the Dingle Peninsula, and, just to its South, the Ring of Kerry Peninsula with its tremendous, craggy, mountainous terrain that juts up in the center. I wish I had been able to take a picture of that glimpse through the windshield, but I certainly could not do so whilst driving on those Irish highways.

Unfortunately, everyone else seemed to have the same idea about visiting the Killarney area that weekend, possibly due to the good weather we were having, and when we arrived at the Information Center in Killarney, all the B&Bs in Killarney were booked up! However, John at the Information Center kept working at finding us a place until he located a B&B just a couple kilometers out of town. We retraced our route on N22 until we found the Redwood B&B, and there we had a room for at least the first night---we're not sure about tomorrow night until the owner gets home and checks for prior reservations.

We went to the nearby Lidl store to get some ham, cheese, bread, and scones for our evening snack, and I avoided the temptation to buy one of the band saws that they had on sale for 99 Euro, but just barely. I thought maybe I could declare it as hand luggage or something, but as it was a big box at least 3 feet high, that might not have worked. Ah well.

Returning to our rooms out at the Redwood B&B, we had our evening snack, whereafter I just conked out like a light bulb switched off. I did not even rouse when our landlady came in and talked to Monika, taking both our orders for breakfast the next morning as well as assuring us that we could have the room for two nights. Monika informed me of that the next morning, which took a load off my mind as I wanted to be able to dedicated the whole day to driving the Ring of Kerry and not have to worry about packing up and finding a new place to stay for the night.