Isn't he cute? But that look in his eyes - I am not sure what he is planning
Look at those blue eyes - he is so darn cute!!!
This is called a jaunting car. Fran said they used these to go to and from church when she was little and she is not old at all.
We then headed right down the road in Kilarney to a castle - Ross Castle was the name.
It is a 15th century castle. Ross was the last castle to surrender to the British Cromwell and it was the headquarters of the O'Donoghue clan.
The boys LOVED the cannons!!! They asked if the other castles that we are going to see would have them.
This is the side of the castle that faced the water. All the castles seemed to be built near water.
After that we went to Muckross House. It was started in 1839-1843 built for the Herbert family.
As you can see in the picture there are over 50 fireplaces in the home. The highlight of their social prestige was when the British Queen Victoria stayed for a few days. They spent 6 years expanding the house and gardens and spending huge sums of money for her to stay only two days. She was given the master suite. It put them in such debt that in 1897 had to be transferred. So the second owners were a wealthy family with the last name of Guinness and yes it is the beer-brewing family. What is interesting is that they never lived in the house. They just rented the house and land only to hunting parties.
We weren't supposed to take pictures in the house, but I snapped one before I was told. These trophies were everywhere. Before they were able to preserve the heads they actually wrote the name and date of the hunter who killed it. The house was amazing and beautiful. They even had small stairs in the kids' rooms.
This is part of the garden on the estate.
Next we went to a beautiful waterfall called Toric waterfall. It is amazing all of the different beauty of Ireland. It seemed like around each corner there was a different beauty.
Here we are at the waterfall - having a great time!!!
The boys saw these stairs and decided they had to see where they led. We went up and up and up oh and up some more. I am glad I didn't go running that morning. :-)
We got to this height and then it started going down again. We weren't sure where it went and how much longer it would take. So we decided to head back. It was quite a hike but as you can see the scenery was worth it!
My boys!!!! All the trees around there had that beautiful green to it.
I love these old bridges and the stone work in them!!
Here they just cut through the rock to make the road - kind of cracks me up!
This was a little church that we saw along the road. It is a little hard to see, but there is a Celtic cross on the closest steeple and then a christian cross on the back one.
This is the view back into the valley that we had just drove through it is part of the Killarney National Park. I love the roads that Fran took, it is definitely the road less traveled, beautiful routes and awesome scenery!!!
The boys decided that it was time to wrestle with dad!!! Look at the joy in their faces!!! They had such a great time!!
Here was Kenmare Stone Circle. This is the biggest stone circle in the south-west of Ireland where about 100 examples occur. Stone circles were built during the Bronze age (2,200-500 BC) for ritual and ceremonial purposes. Some studies have indicated that they were orientated on certain solar and lunar events, such as the position of the sun on the horizon on a solstice. In the centre of the circle is a type of burial monument known as a Boulder Burial. These are rarely found outside of south-western Ireland.
The boys were climbing on all of the rocks and then decided to look like they were getting buried.
AJ's turn
So speaking of the road less traveled. Fran found this Castle - Castle Matrix. It is privately owned and she went knocking one day because she thought it was a place that might be an old relative of one of her tours. The owner, who was a little crazy, let her in to see the inside and was a little weird and asked if they wanted to see the dungeons. So she took us there and told us to look around and I was a little worried that the owner might come out and take us to her dungeons. So I didn't dally. :-)
That night we stayed in Ennis at the hotel called Old Ground Hotel. It was built in the early part of the 18th century as a private dwelling. In 1927 it was bought by James O'Regan. They had a great restaurant attached to the hotel.
We thought this was really kind of neat - a good poured Guinness you are supposed to be able to put a quarter on top, they put imprints in theirs
We just chose our own table and then David looked up and there was a picture of his favorite author, William Butler Yates, behind us--so we had to get a picture of it. :-)
After dinner we relaxed and played a little bit of go fish. That was one thing that was really nice about this trip, we were able to relax and not worry about anything. We played lots of games and had such a wonderful time together!! And this was the end to another great day!!
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