Killarney

Sunday, July 4, 2010
Early night last night! Had to catch up on some sleep...again. This partying business is hard work! We had big plans for the day. We started out renting some bikes around 9am from a local bike shop to tour around the Killarney National Park. The park was massive and there was no way we could even attempt to do it all. We only had about 3 hours to tour so we first went to the Ross castle which is on the edge of the park and along the water so it was a nice tour around there. We didn’t make it into the castle but it was nice just around the castle and along the river’s edge. The next stop was the Torc waterfall...unfortunately we couldn’t find any signage and didn’t have a good trail map so once again we got lost. We toured around the park for about half an hour before finally stopping to ask for directions. We got tired of being lost in the rain and had a time limit. So we found our way down the main road and worked our way back into the park and the waterfall was amazing!! It was pretty secluded but tranquil and just gorgeous. We only had a few minutes at the spot but we enjoyed the time we had there. We then rode back into town to try and catch a train back to cork...yes, cork! Although we didn’t have a good experience with cork, we were willing to give it another go. However, we had missed the train and the next one wasn’t for several hours. We wouldn’t get to see Blarney castle again today. Anyhow, it wasn’t a total loss as we had found our earlier that there was a local Gaelic football match in town and it was the big final game. The town was crazy with green and gold and the whole town was either at the match or at the pub. It was pretty cool to see and experience. We had been told earlier that if we got the chance, we should watch a game and see what it is all about. We were in for a treat! The game is a cross between footy and American football with a basketball element too, oh ya and its super violent. So you can either bounce or kick the ball to yourself while running down the field or pass or throw or kick to another player. If you score in the net (soccer net) you get 3 points and if you throw/kick it through the field goal posts than you receive 1 point for your team. The penalties are a joke...pretty much they only call personal penalties if you tackle someone to the ground or you are “pulling too much” but they were grabbing, pushing and pulling all of the time. Needless to say, our team Kerry or Ciarrai (in gaelic) won!!! Yeah!! It was insane...the crowd went absolutely wild and the party continued in the streets. We were dirty and burnt so we decided to go back to the hostel and clean up a bit before the night. We met some people in the hostel and one of them was a guy from Boston who was starting a pub crawl in Killarney and offered to take us out for free...sweet...saving 20 euro, we’re in! So we quickly grabbed some fish, chips and curry as it was all that was open and had a few brews before we took off for yet another pub crawl. To our surprise, we were 2 of 5 people including the organizer. Oh well, free drinks and a tour guide of the pubs. It turned out to be a pretty good night. The people were nice and it was fun to get out and dance and party with the locals. Heather and I had our first Irish car bomb in Ireland. I forgot how nasty they are...blah! We also ran into some friends we met in Derry, they are travelling on a weeklong paddywagon tour and just so happened to be in Killarney last night. It was friggin hilarious when they recognized us and we all had a good laugh. We ended the night around 1...earlier than the pubcrawl organizer anticipated but we had a 630 wakeup call and couldn’t miss our last chance for Blarney.