Ireland Trip 2023

(Above--the only rainbow we saw in our entire trip. Robert kept looking for them, but this was all we spotted.)

Breakfast at the B&B was nice. There was a cold buffet with the now-standard extremely sour yogurts, some assorted cereals, and tiny pan au chocolates that have been the exact same in every hotel. Plus the kids ordered pancakes and I got porridge and Robert got a full Irish.

After breakfast we drove to Falconry Kerry, which was just a few minutes from the hotel, and met our falconer Mira and her birds for an hour-long experience. Our primary bird was a Harris’s hawk named James who was just about a year old and still a distractible youngster, as she described him.

James was so light when he landed on your glove (or for Samantha, your sweatshirt sleeve, or for Robert, his shoulder—they look for tall perches, after all).

We all got to put some raw chicken (she buys them frozen, head and feathers and all, and just takes out the intestines because those are too rich for the birds to eat daily; apparently all the chickens sold in stores to eat are females and so the male ones get frozen for things like this) on our glove and have the bird fly to us over and over while she talked about them and answered questions. Everyone thought this was super exciting.

After a long time of James, we got an African spotted eagle owl named Cookie who also flew for us for a bunch.

 

After Cookie, we had a great horned owl named Rusty who still used a tether because he was still in training (though Mira said he’s very quick and would likely be off the tether by the end of the week. Still, he did just learn to fly last week and was just 10 weeks old and she didn’t want him to get distracted by a bird).

Then the last bird was Gandalf, an adorable great grey owl who was just 6 weeks old.

 

We could pet him because his permanent feathers hadn’t come in yet, and he couldn’t even fly, just walk very cutely. His legs were adorably fuzzy. All of the owls made funny sounds that were sort of like “meh” and sort of like “maaa” (different depending on the owl) because apparently those are their imprinting sounds, versions of the sounds they make in the wild as babies calling to their parents for food.

I think for Samantha this experience was the highlight of the trip so far, but we all loved it. It wasn’t even scary for me, and I am not an animal person—it was sort of mildly unnerving the first time the bird flies at you, but it was really clear it didn’t want to hit us, and I trusted it to stop in time. Robert had a great time capturing video, including some fun slow-motion ones:

 

From there we went to a Tesco just for fun and to buy some clementines and some snacks to keep in the car. Helen found a soccer shaped cake that she loved (which we didn’t get) and I was relieved to find the pancake section (just like in NZ). In American supermarkets, we don’t have pancakes, actually. They might have packaged crepes, and of course pancake mix, but unless it’s like an Eggo frozen thing, I’ve never seen pancakes. We got some different kinds of Irish potato chips (crisps) and some different Cadbury things, and some other treats, plus Robert needed a new power adapter and Samantha needed a new glue stick.

Then we drove into Killarney National Park. Our biggest impression of the park is that yes, it’s a lovely scenic place, lots of old growth forests and mountains and meadows with herds of red deer, but it’s also incredibly poorly marked and organized. When you drive in it was completely unclear where to go. I was expecting something like a “Welcome to Killarney National park!” sign and then a clearly-marked visitors’ center that had a big map of the park with a clear “You are here” thing, and then other signs that said “XYZ hike (3 hours, strenuous), this way” and “ABC scenic walk (15 minutes, easy), this way” etc. But nope—pretty much nothing as far as signage, though lovely walks and views.

At any rate, we got very confused and parked in a parking lot (after first almost getting stuck IN the forest because we didn’t realize that there were no cars past that point (again, a “no cars past this point” sign would have come in handy, but it didn’t exist).

Then everyone disagreed about which way to go on the unmarked path, so I went with Samantha and we discovered a Victorian house and cafe and gardens, plus a traditional farm (we skipped the farm but walked the gardens) while Robert and Marcus and Helen found another ruined abbey in the forest in the other direction.

 

I don’t normally go into a national park in the US and think “wow, what great signage!” but now I might start thinking that, because the contrast was sharp. Still, we had a nice time on our separate walks.

We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in town—the kids kind of rebelled and wanted familiar food, so Marcus had a spicy ramen, and Samantha and Helen shared a regular ramen. I had a yakisoba and Robert had a Japanese fried chicken burger. It was a very pretty place and everyone demolished everything.

From there we went to what had sounded (from various guide websites) like a historic home in the center of town but which actually turned out to be the visitors’ center for the national park—surprise! Weirdly it was not connected to everything else, except by a 30 minute walk, which seemed impractical, and it had no parking lot. It did have a great display about all the flora and fauna of the park, and the ice age, and all sorts of other interesting geological facts, and it was free, so I’m glad we made it there, but I’m still scratching my head how one was supposed to organize all of this.

Then we drove just a few more minutes to the Killarney Riding Stables, for our 3:30 horseback riding tour. None of the kids (or I!) was happy with the smell of the place. Samantha refused to get out of the car, and Marcus only did so under duress. They insisted that the smell would not be noticeable once you were out of the stables, and thank goodness they were right. They gave us boots and helmets and then we went to get up on our horses. Helen had one named Toni who was little and friendly. I turned out to be riding one of Toni’s kids, named Mumba, and Marcus had Ben, and Robert had Adam. Robert’s horse was known for being the most stubborn (he kept stopping to eat ferns and wildflowers and the guides kept saying not to let him, because it was a bad habit). You needed a step to get up onto the horse and then I almost had a heart attack at the moment when they said “just swing your leg over the horse” but eventually I did it. Terrifying! I was certain I was going to fall. It was so unstable and felt so precarious. Helen looked perfect on her horse and was clearly blissed out. Marcus had a good face on it but later said “never make me do that again.”

We rode for an hour through the national park and saw the lake up close and the mountains (from farther away) and rode right through lots and lots of deer.

 

In case it wasn't obvious, this was my first time on a horse, and it will probably be my last. I was initially fairly hysterical and kept laughing/shrieking uncontrollably, but I had just relaxed a bit when the guides made us trot. Oh my gosh—at that point, I thought for sure I was going to fall off and die. Each time I went up in the air I was not at all certain I was going to come back down on the horse. I decided to just keep my eyes closed until we returned to a walk.

We all made it, though, and then when I thought it was all over, and we were back at the barn, they said it was time to get off the horse. I looked around for those little plastic steps we had used to get up on them, but no, apparently we had to touch the horse’s mane or neck with our hands and lean onto its neck with our chest and then swing a leg over and dangle and hope we didn’t die while dropping to the ground. Spoiler alert. I shrieked again, felt sure I DID die, and then Robert caught me. Phew.

From there, we reclaimed Samantha, went into town, and accidentally did dinner and dessert in the wrong order, first getting the kids ice cream and then going into The Mad Monk and having a really fantastic seafood meal—marinated spiced monkfish kebabs, black sole rolled around a filling of chili crabmeat, and crab claws in a gorgeous garlic butter with bread to sop it up, plus a kids’ fish and chips and kids’ prawns and chips. We shared another sticky toffee pudding for dessert, at which point I broke it to Samantha that it contains dates. Kiss of death!

Our last stop of the day was back in the national park from yet another different entrance where there was a castle (the interior was now closed for the day, but you could walk around the walls and yards) and ducks on the lake looking out to a small island where there was a 7th century monastery, the ruins now hidden in the trees.

We walked around the grounds a bit more, appreciating the misty weather, and then went back to the hotel to change out of horsey clothes and go to bed.

The next day, faced with the same hotel breakfast as yesterday, everyone seemed happy to have the exact same thing they did the day before, except for Robert, who hopefully said “maybe something other than the….ah. Okay. I’ll have the full Irish.”

Then we drove a little over an hour to Cork, and went first to the Cork City Gaol for a tour and a scavenger hunt for Helen. At the end they offered her a lolly in green, yellow, or orange for filling out the kids’ page, and she paused, considering, and Marcus said, in his most charming way, “uh, I’ll take an orange, please?” and then Samantha said (slightly less charmingly, but still with a hopeful smile), “I’ll take a green…” and eventually Helen decided on yellow, and of couse the person gave one to all of them. We saw the cell where Countess Markiewicz was imprisoned during the Irish civil war, among other things. When the prison was decommissioned, they’d turned it into a radio station, so there was also an exhibit about radio waves and Morse code, and Robert and Marcus also found that interesting.

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Created: 7/2/23. Last Modified: 7/2/23.