Jill and Thomas' Honeymoon Blog

we spent a few final hours in kilkenny and then headed about two hours north to dublin. we stayed at the beautiful carton house hotel, a beautiful historic building with contrasting modern amenities…

we spent some time about the city and treated ourselves to a delicious chocolate pyramid 🙂

thomas thoroughly enjoyed the breakfasts in ireland – at the hotel, you always had the option of the traditional irish breakfast.  it is a vegetarian’s nightmare and consists of pretty much every animal you can imagine fried to a crisp..i opted for the eggs 🙂
The grand finale to our adventure was a tour of the guinness factory, complete with a free pint at the end. seven floors of the wonder and history – thomas was in heaven 🙂

The seventh floor overlooked the entire city of dublin…

we traveled from the east coast to the west coast, about 3 and a half hours to prepare for our flight out of shannon the next morning, we spent a little time in the larger city of limerick before heading home…

the trip home was the final, and only leg without complication but with plenty of time to catch up on sleep…the last two and half weeks could not have been more perfect!

the drive was about two hours north east of killarney. kilkenny is an adorable and busy tourist town and we stayed in a wonderful countryside b&b a few miles out. we arrived very hungry and enjoyed some highly recommended authentic irish cuisine at a popular local pub. i found in ireland that in general, you have pubs and pubs that serve food – the restaurant is a less common phenomenon 🙂

guinness is truly a national heritage here, thomas is showing his ability to drink his beer faster 😛

the famous guinness and beef casserole…

we then went to another local pub with fantastic live irish musicians 🙂

A view of the town at night…

and the next morning, we headed off to the killkenny castle. A 12th century castle that had been remodeled during the victorian era. Truly magnificent inside though we weren’t able to get any pictures on the guided tour. There is a very extensive park around the outside that was filled with people, we took some great pictures from there…

there is no other way to describe the southern coast of ireland than truly breathtaking. according to the owner of the local b&b we stayed at, the weather could not have been more perfect for our drive around the ring of kerry which started in scenic killarny.
the ring consists of beautiful coastal and countryside views passing though small towns with little shops and pubs.

a sunday morning in killorglin. the only things open are the churches and the pubs 🙂

beautiful views near cahersiveen:

the beach near caherdaniel. yes, irish people actually attempting to get a tan and really most of them were turning into lobsters. someone should really tell them its a bad idea 🙂

i love the sheep! a very important element of the irish landscape 🙂

this is bob the sheep, he was particularly annoyed by our attempts to photograph him.

the largest (and most intact) stone fort in ireland which, as it turns out, they do not know much about the people who lived inside…

on the way back to killarney, we came up on the large national park and beautiful views of the three lakes in the area as the sun was setting…

the next day, we decided to head back to the park for some hiking before we headed to kilkenny, we started at ross castle and headed on…

getting to ireland was quite an adventure and consisted of spending the night at the stansed airport in london followed by an early morning flight into dublin. once we arrived, we secured our little rental car and learned how to drive on the left hand side of the narrow winding roads 5 hours to the town of killarney.

people in ireland were so friendly! as soon as we opened a map on the street, at least two people would stop to offer to help us. with the massive amounts of tourism, you would think they would be tired of the confused people 😉

while we unfortunately missed the ceremony, we attended a fabulous wedding once we arrived, good food, drinks, and dancing! the irish really know how to party, we left at 2am from sheer exhaustion and most were still going strong!