Ireland and Iceland - Day 6 - Ring of Kerry, Ring of Dingle and lots of great pictures

We left bright and early on a very ambitious schedule, to do the Ring of Kerry and Ring of Dingle in one day. This will be a relatively short report, instead featuring many beautiful scenic views from our drive. On the map Ring of Kerry is the peninsula marked "4" and the Ring of Dingle is the peninsula marked "2".

We got a good night's sleep and early the next morning we were off to do the Ring of Kerry.

Driving the Ring of Kerry (a circular route around the Kerry Peninsula, which forms part of the Wild Atlantic Way roads along the western shore of Ireland) is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Ireland and is one of the most famous drives in the world. 

 

In fact, National Geographic ranks it the 57th best scenic drive in the world. Number 1 in the world, btw, is the Cape Breton drive in Nova Scotia.

The vast number of visitors do this as part of a bus tour and so, if you are driving your rental car behind one of the hundreds of buses on the ring each day, you really have no control of the time to circumnavigate the ring. 

 

Unless you read Rick Steves first.

Rick writes in his Irish guide that the buses all take the counterclockwise direction, and therefore he advises driving the ring in a clockwise direction. Be at Kenmare before 8:30 AM and drive till you reach the town of Waterville by noon. At this point, turn off the main road in the direction of Portmagee and do the smaller ring drive attached to the main ring, and by the time you rejoin the main ring, you will have missed all the buses, with the remaining oncoming traffic consisting of easily passable cars. 

 

We followed his instructions and lo and behold did not see a tour bus all day! Amazing!

 

Along the way, we passed a sign indicating that we should turn in to see the best scenic view in all of the Ring of Kerry and we had reached the Cliffs of Kerry. It really was beautiful and the access paths that had been built to give you views of both the right and left edges of the cliffs, were done very well. 

 

 

In fact, while I am jumping a bit ahead, one of the most visited tourist spots in Ireland, the Cliffs of Moher, which we visited on Thursday, are not as scenic, in our humble opinion, as the Cliffs of Kerry. 

 

We took our time viewing the many magnificent views along the way and even visited the town of Waterville, known as Charlie Chaplin's town and we drove the picturesque island of Valentia. 

While in Waterville, we stopped for a coffee at the hotel made famous by Charlie Chaplin (who used to vacation here....there is even a statue of Charlie in town frequented by every tour bus😀) and were directed to the bar for our coffees. 

 

While sitting at the bar, we mentioned to the bar man that we had never tasted beer.....well, you should have seen the shocked look of total disbelief on his face! It was as though he was looking at people from another planet. After he came back down to earth, he asked whether we would like to taste some beer and graciously poured us a small sip of "ale" which he said would likely not give too much of a shock to our beerless stomachs.

 

No longer beer virgins, we headed onto the island of Valentia, joined to the mainland by a bridge and drove across the island to the other side, where you rejoin the mainland on a car ferry boat. 

While waiting for the ferry, I approached fellow motorists to ask where to purchase tickets for the ferry boat ride. A local Irishman, (who we later found out was a fisherman from the immediate area) who was standing with his motorcycle speaking to two young women from Switzerland, answered that you purchase your tickets on board the boat. He then noticed my kippah and exclaimed "oh my God, you are a Jew!". I said "yes I am!". 

 

He then told me that just before I approached him, he had been giving these two women "heck" (not the word he used, but you get the idea) for the way Switzerland had taken possession of hundreds of billions of dollars of Jewish art, wealth and money in Swiss banks during the Holocaust, and now were trying to buy them off with a few billion dollars given to the claims conference. 

The Swiss women were claiming that perhaps the Holocaust never happened and he was very furious with them. So I simply said that I can prove the Holocaust happened as I had someone in the car who was born in Bergen Belsen, a concentration camp.

He was amazed and immediately said that he had to meet Fran. He came over to the car and with extreme respect and admiration and in a great Irish accent, said, "you are the very first person I have ever met from the Holocaust". 

Here was a man in the middle of nowhere, who likely had never met a Jew before and he was fighting our battles with people who were denying the Holocaust. Henry (we were now on a first name basis) insisted on taking a picture with Fran that he said he would cherish because of her background and jokingly said "you know we Irish are great romantics, so David, you should likely be very jealous and worried by now"! 

We exited from the Ring of Kerry and entered the peninsula above it, the Ring of Dingle. Again, mile after mile of breathtaking scenery. We kept driving west until we reached Dunquin which is the westernmost point in Europe, ie; the closest location to Newfoundland Canada. It was also where the first Transatlantic cable connected the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere.

 

We continued on our way to the town of Tralee, where we had to be by 8 PM because we had booked theatre tickets to a show about the People of Blasket Islands, that explained their interesting heritage and customs through story and song. People had lived on the Blasket Islands from the late 1200s till 1953, when the villagers were forcibly removed by the government because they had no medical attention and living in such a remote place presented a danger to its inhabitants. 

It was a great show and it was entirely in Gaelic which we and most of those in the theatre did not understand. But through the very good dramatic performance, we understood the presentation and the very clear message that even tho life was tough, the quality of life there was better than the hustle and bustle and difficult challenges presented by city life. 

When we exited the theatre, it was pitch black and we still had a 30 minute drive to our Airbnb for the night. Here is another observation of Irish roads. On a North American small country road, even when it is dark, there is the occasional gas station, houses which have light or signage that gives you the feeling that there is other life around than simply you and your car. On small Irish country roads, you would think that you were the sole survivor of some catastrophe and that there is no other life left. It is totally dark, there are few houses and then those that you find are totally dark. 

Thankfully we had good directions and Waze and we reached our destination as planned. We knew that it was on an island in the north of the county, but had no idea that it was one of only two homes on the island. It was called CastleView because there were the remains of a castle just across the water from the Airbnb, but when we arrived, it was so dark that we saw nothing. On the positive side, what we did see when looking up was the clearest sparkling of hundreds of stars in the dark sky.

Off to bed and next we head up to the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren Smokehouse, Galway and back to Dublin for our second Shabbat.

All the best

Fran and David