Day 6 began with breakfast at Murphy’s and then off to see the Ring of Kerry!!! The Ring of Kerry is so beautiful.
When we had arrived at our hotel the night before our hotel desk attendant suggested that we might want to take a bus tour for our trip around the Ring of Kerry so that we didn’t have to drive all day again because we did have 2 cars. So, we booked the day with O’Connor Autotours and our driver John O’Neill was awesome and definitely made the day. We payed $27/per person for the all day trip. Lunch not included. Plus there were 2 optional stops for €5 each, so really it was $40/person
Though it was nice to just ride along for the day, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you have a car, be adventurous and drive it yourselves!! Plus we spent $200 for the 6 of us!! We would have spent WAY less than that on petrol for our tiny cars. We spent a lot of wasted time waiting on other people and didn’t get to see almost anything on our must-see list of castles and standing stones.
We stopped at the Sheep Dog Trail to watch a professional sheep dog herder demonstrate how the sheep dogs follow whistle commands to herd the sheep. It was amazing to watch the dogs perform even way up the hill, almost out of sight!! But, we had to wait for over 30 minutes for the next demonstration. Plus, it was an extra €5.
We also stopped at the Kerry Bog Museum to see an authentic 18th century famine village. It was pretty and interesting, but we stayed there way to long when was so much more beautiful country-side to see.
The tour stopped lunch at a roadside stop called the Scarriff Inn. It was a pretty view of the coast, but I feel we would have rather stopped at a little roadside café or pub. The Scarriff Inn is definitely used to serving to the bus and tour crowd and was a little pricy and the service wasn’t great.
Other than the Kerry Bog Museum and the Sheep Dog trail, there were a few little stops by the bus. Because of the bus windows and glare we have very few good pictures from the day. Which, for me was very disappointing.
Needless to say, on our next trip in June we will be driving it ourselves and stopping for pictures anytime we want!!! We are definitely stopping at Ballycarbery Castle where part of Leap Year was filmed and maybe a little hike in the Gap of Dunloe!!!!
After we arrived back in Killarney for our second night, we had a wonderful fish and chips dinner again and hit the pubs!!!
Stay tunes for my blog all about our fun in Killarney!!
