Co. Kerry Excursion

So Sunday-Wednesday were not very exciting.  Classes and homework pretty much sucked up my life.  We left Thursday morning for our excursion around Co. Kerry.  The journey began with a three hour bus ride to Kilmar (sp?) where we would take a 20 minute ferry to avoid a couple hours of drive time.  The reason that it took three hours to get to the ferry was because we left at 8am when everyone is trying to get to school or work...  So I got a good nap in for those three hours.  The ferry was cool, some of the girls were so excited that the bus was actually going on the ferry.  Anyway, so after the ferry we drove along the Dingle peninsula.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  Our bus stopped at a lookout point on a cliff to take pictures.  I am bummed because my camera batteries were dead so I missed out on pictures here but I will steal some from everyone else.  Again, there was a little path where people could look, and we decided to make our own path and venture farther down the cliff...  I guess we are just a crazy bunch of Americans.  We got a lot of good pictures...including a couple of Matt the Viking scaling the Irish cliffs..haha.  After we all made it back to the bus safely we continued on our journey.  We made another stop at the Gallarus Oratory where there was a small church made without any mortar and with a corbel roof.  There are hardly any of these left in Ireland because since its made without mortar its hard to be preserved.  We snapped some pictures, the guys running it said that I would be back in ten years, and then we departed once again.  Next stop was in the town of Portmagee where we stayed the next two nights.  That night we took it easy, I just watched a movie and went to bed.  

On Friday we had a full-day photography workshop.  Basically our faculty director had some friends living in/visiting the area and they were Norwegian photographers.  In the morning we had a basic rundown of photography stuff, after lunch we went and took some pictures, and then in the afternoon they went through some of our pictures and critiqued them.  Yeah...I am not photography savy. I didn't really like the workshop because none of us had nice cameras to use, so what was the point?  Anyway, after that was over we went back to the hostel and made dinner.  Then we ventured into the town of Portmagee (not much of a town) to hang out at the pub.  It was a great night, all 30 of us were there (including our director and assistant director).  We pretty much took over the pub and we didn't really care because it was such a small town.  They had set dancing going on that night too.  Several older couples did a sort of square dancing type thing.  It was actually cool because another girl in my group grabbed me and we tried it out with them.  I got to dance with some of the older guys and they were all very nice.  I also got the chance to talk with a couple from London, and they were also very nice.  Oh, and we requested the Wild Rover song and we sang and danced to that!  So yeah, overall a good night.

The next morning we departed Portmagee and ventured around the rest of Kerry.  We went through the Rings of Kerry which was pretty much just some more pretty landscape.  We stopped at the Killarney National Park and played around there for a bit.  Next we went to the Muckross House which was actually really cool.  It was a huge mansion that has been preserved.  The Herbert family lived there and Queen Victoria actually made a visit there.  They were given a 6 year notice of the Queen's arrival.  They made vast adjustments to their house and property for her 2 night stay.  It was really interesting to actually go through the house and see what some people lived like back then.  After the tour of the house we were able to roam around the gardens for a little bit.  The garden was really cool, it definitely felt like the Secret Garden.  There were actually two wedding parties there taking pictures, so that was cool.  Then we try to walk to the waterfall that was nearby but we had to get back to the bus.  So that was a bummer.  We checked into our hostel in the town of Killarney.  Killarney seems like a really cool town, I loved staying there that night.  We were right downtown and it was a bigger town.  If I come back to Ireland I would love to go back there.  After dinner and all that jazz we went out for the evening and mingled with the local life.  There was a group of about 50 students also staying in our hostel from Limerick...they were the kayak club of their school.  They were having a themed night of dress up as your favorite toy as a kid.  Let me tell you that they went all out!  It was great to see all of their costumes.  Two of them made awesome Lego man costumes and one of my cottage-mates stole one of their Lego hands.  

Sunday morning we departed Killarney at 10am.  We stopped in Tralee to visit the Kerry County Museum.  It was actually a really cool museum.  The basement pretty much felt like Disney-world.  It depicted what Tralee was like back in medieval times, full of wax people to freak you out.  They should really open it up for Halloween.  Then the upper level had a bunch of exhibits about the people of that area.  My favorite was definitely taking pictures with the wax people.  You can see them on facebook if you like.  Then after the museum we headed to the ferry, stopped in Galway for groceries, and came back to our cottages.  As soon as we got home we were busy unpacking, making dinner, doing homework, and catching up on email/blogs.  I also booked my trip for our ten day break in two weeks.  I am going to London for 4 nights and Paris for 3.  It should be a lot of fun :)  Then in November I am going to Germany for a weekend to visit a friend.  So, that just about wraps things up for now.  Some of the guys here are having nap time right now so that they can watch the Vikings/Packers game that starts here at 1:30am.  I might try to stay up for that...we'll see.