Meredith’s dad, Dale, did pass away on Sunday, June 22nd. We were still en route to Dublin to catch a plane home. We got home to our house around 11:45 Monday night. That was not a terrible thing – we did not have to see Dale sick in his hospital bed. Aunt Mary and Carlene (Meredith’s mom) were there, and they sang hymns as Dale’s breathing slowed and then stopped. It sounded very peaceful, and we got home soon enough to start to help with the planning for calling hours and a memorial service. Dale will be laid to rest in Carlene’s family plot in Maine, so we will be up there as well.

Here is what Meredith wrote for the obituary for her dad:

Dale Barton King, age 84, made the final steps of his earthly pilgrimage on Sunday, June 22, 2014. Born to Frank and Mary King in Flint, Mich., he is survived by his brother, Frank King; his sister, Mary King; his wife, Carlene Wooster King, and their daughter, Meredith King Riordan and her husband, Matt.

Though he had not originally intended to become an English professor, those who knew him would have been hard pressed to imagine his having become anything else. Upon realizing his desire for a liberal arts education, Dale transferred from Kansas City Bible College to Bob Jones University. After earning his undergraduate degree from Bob Jones, he did graduate work at both the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia, where he was a DuPont Fellow. He began his professorial career at Bob Jones, but spent the majority of it at Malone College (now University), including a year as an exchange professor at Hong Kong Baptist College, which prompted a Malone student to complain, “Why are they sending one of the best teachers away?” Following his retirement from Malone in 1995, he and Carlene moved to Casselberry, Fla.; however, rather than taking up fishing or golfing, he found himself returning to the classroom, this time at The Geneva School. Initially filling a mid-year need for a junior high history teacher, he ended up teaching high school English at Geneva for over a decade, not truly retiring until the age of 80, and considering his time at Geneva to have been a delightful and rewarding postscript to his teaching career. His love of literature was superseded only by his love for his family and his Lord. He cherished his wife throughout their 45 years of marriage and raised a daughter who has been greatly blessed by his wisdom, encouragement, and example. Throughout his life, he sought to know God better and to communicate this knowledge to those around him. During the 70s and 80s, he served as a part-time pastor at New Baltimore Community Church in New Baltimore, Ohio, and was most recently a grateful and enthusiastic member of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla.. Those who had the privilege of knowing Dale will miss his spiritual insights, his sense of humor, and his annual Christmas letters that sent most readers running to the dictionary multiple times.

We started this Sunday off by going to church at a Methodist church in Donegal. The people were very friendly, and the service was quite nice. The pastor had a children’s lesson on gift-giving through the last hundred years, from cloth wrapping to brown paper to fancy wrapping paper. All three gifts contained the name “Jesus” and the point was that God gave us a great gift in the form of Jesus, who has stayed the same through the ages. The actual sermon was quite good as well, with the passage being based on two passages – one when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, and the other when Peter, John, and some others go fishing, and then come to shore when Jesus tells them where to cast their nets to catch a large number of fish. The point of the sermon was that Jesus calls us “to get out feet wet.” We should be serving each other, and looking to engage the area in which God has put us. We should see the beauty around us and be thankful for it, and we should try to share that beauty.

After church, I checked my e-mail. I had a message from Aunt Mary that indicated that Mer’s father, Dale, was quite ill and in intensive care in the hospital. I used Skype on the computer to call home, and after talking with Aunt Mary and doctors at the hospital, we decided we should make every effort to get home efficiently.  Our B and B hostess was out, so we took a walk out to the river in Donegal, and walked along the lower walking area along the bay for a little ways. We had a very good view of the bay. We headed back to the B and B, where we found our hostess there, so we explained everything to her.  Before going to the airport, I decided to try to see if we could get tickets, so we managed to book tickets on Aer Lingus for tomorrow (Monday). That was a huge relief. Marie, our hostess at the Water’s Edge B and B, only charged us for two nights (it was 3:00 in the afternoon, so she could have charged us for another day). I strongly recommend Marie’s place if you ever get to Donegal.

What followed was about four hours of pretty driving to get us to Dublin. We dropped off the car and got a shuttle bus to the airport and then a shuttle bus to our hotel. By then, it was about 7:30. We still needed to eat, so we got a cab to Grafton Street in downtown Dublin, where we ate at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen restaurant, which seems to be a chain (at least, we ate at one in London a few years ago).

After supper, we wandered down Grafton Street to Stephen’s Green, a large park in the middle of the city. We wanted to get a picture of the statue of the poet Yeats that is there. To our surprise, the park was locked. It is enclosed by a fence, and there was no way in. It must close at 9:00 or so (it was 9:05).

Disappointed, but undeterred, we headed over to another nearby park to get a picture of the statue of Oscar Wilde. Happily, we got there five minutes before the park closed, so although we could not enjoy the park, we did get the photo.

We also wanted to see the grounds of Trinity College. We knew the buildings would be locked, but the grounds were also walled in, and we saw no way to get in. Lastly, there was a statue I wanted to get a picture of – one of Molly Malone. There is an Irish song about a young woman who sells seafood, and her name is Molly Malone in the song, and there was a statue of her on Grafton Street. Note the “was” — because of construction, the statue was moved. It was only moved two blocks away, but we did not know that until I checked when we got back to the hotel. We went 1-for-4 in Dublin, but it was still a good evening to walk about, especially where we could not do any good in the hotel (as far as getting home).

So, if all goes well, we should be back in Toronto around 4:30 tomorrow, and then have to clear customs before driving the five hours back home.

One of the gems of traveling is the unexpected, especially when it involves people delighting you in unexpected ways. Today, after a later start, we headed west to the edge of Donegal, to the tiny town of Malinbeg. Malinbeg is home to the Silver Strand, an amazing beach towered over by hills on three sides. We took the stairs down to the beach, where there was a group of late-teens playing some kind of ball game. As we approached, it became obvious that these very Irish kids were playing American baseball. With a tennis ball. And a cricket bat. And their diamond looked more like a trapezoid. And at the end of an inning, one team declared that it had “four points.” And they were having a great time playing, and we loved watching them and listening to them more or less get the rules mostly right. What a wonderful moment.

The beach was great too. We walked the length of it, and we marveled at how the sheep were grazing on what to us appeared to be impossible angles on the sides of hills. The sun was warm when it came out from behind the clouds, and there was a steady, easy breeze. We loved it — what an amazing spot in which to be. It was recommended to us by an Irishman we met fourteen years ago, and I still had his e-mail. He was kind enough to send a reply, and strongly recommended Malinbeg, where he was born. I am deeply grateful that he told us to go there.

After we made the long climb back up the stairs, we headed over to the nearby town of Glencolmcille. We had been in Glencolmcille briefly fourteen years ago, but had only seen a little of the place. This time we stopped at the local folk village, a small museum of seven houses that showed how Irish houses looked in the eighteenth century, from around 1850, and from the early twentieth century. All the houses had thatched roofs, but the later they got, the bigger they got. Some of the same things popped up that we saw in the Muckross Farm houses on Thursday, such as the children sleeping inside a bed/bench in the main room of the two-room house. We also learned about Father McDyers, who was a local priest who encouraged the town to build the folk museum as a way to encourage tourism and help make local jobs. He also pushed to get the town electricity and running water in the 1950s. He seemed like a very good man.

We ate a quick lunch at the folk museum tea room, and then we tried to drive into the valley to find a cool-looking church we could see from a distance, but we took a wrong turn and were guided by signs toward St. Colmcille’s chapel, which took us down a very narrow road that dead-ended at a house at the foot of a large hill. I had remembered that hill from our last visit because we had tried to climb it, but realized we were running out of daylight. This time, I just turned the car around, and we found the church we were seeking, which was a small, pretty Church of Ireland church, surrounded by an old, but still-in-use, graveyard. The church was also only about fifty yards from a carved standing stone that looked to be pre-Christian.

After Glencolmcille, we drove over to a sight recommended to us by our friend Jenny and her husband Dan — the cliffs called Slieve Leauge. The locals claim they are the tallest sea cliffs in Europe, but that is debated (Wikipedia has them listed at sixth place). Regardless, they are tall, at 601 meters (1970 feet). They’re easy to get to, depending on how much walking you want to do. We parked at the first parking lot, which leaves about a twenty-minute walk. You can drive up to the viewing area and save the walk, but the road is narrow in many places, and there are many hikers about. Plus, it is a beautiful walk.

The cliffs are very dramatic. They also stretch on for a long time, jutting out into the sea. You can actually climb up to the top of them, and walk along the spine of the cliffs (which fall away on both sides in some places) on a trail called One Man’s Path. Needless to say, with my fear of heights, I did not attempt that. I did marvel at the tiny silhouettes of the people walking up on the edge. We stayed on the safe observation platform, and then climbed as high as the protective fence went. There, I turned around and went back to a bench to sit. Mer went a little bit higher and found a rock on which to sit and contemplate the cliffs.

After the return trip to the car, it was about 6:00. So, we drove the scenic ocean road back to near Killybegs, and from there took the major road back to Donegal. We dropped the car off at the B and B, and walked to town, where we ate at an Italian restaurant. We grabbed a couple of pastries from a shop, and ate them sitting next to the water back at the B and B, while we lavished attention on one of the outdoor rescue kitties that live around the B and B. By then, it was time to get ready for bed.

Mer officially handed off “being in charge” to me this morning. So, for better or worse, I have to make the decisions for the last week of our vacation. I got off to a rocky start.

We slept in as long as we could at the hostel this morning, and then grabbed breakfast in town (Kenmare) at a very cute cafe off of a side street. That was a good decision. Plus one for Our Hero.

After we checked out of the hotel, we got in the car and headed back to the Killarney National Park one more time. It was on our way (north), and I really wanted to see the last major sight we had missed – the Muckross Abbey, near the Muckross House. Before we got to the house, we did a quick stop at the Ladies Overlook again, to look at the view one more time, but also to get a good picture of both of us in front of that magnificent country.

We parked at the Muckross House parking lot and walked to the Abbey, which took about ten minutes. It was well worth a stop. The Abbey was forcefully abandoned under Cromwell in the late 1600s, so it is in ruins now, but the walls are still standing. The Abbey does not look too impressive as you approach it, but it turns out the complex is quite large. The Abbey was built around a courtyard which contains an ancient yew tree. The building was two stories in most places, and there was a four-story bell tower, which was unfortunately closed. The Abbey was full of low doorways and mysterious-looking stairs, and I had a ball exploring it. Plus two for Our Hero.

Then came the Long Drive. I wanted to get to Donegal before evening, and that is about a six-hour drive. But I wanted to stop in Lisdoonvarna to eat at a pub highly recommended by my brother and a friend of his. That would make the drive closer to seven hours, plus the time it would take to eat. Still, that was possible.

We got to Lisdoonvarna around 3:00, and found the pub/restaurant Shannon had mentioned. The door was locked, so we looked for another way in. While we were doing that, another man came up and someone opened the door for him, so we went back, only to find that the bar only does dinner. So we had gone an hour out of our way and could not eat there. Minus one for Our Hero. Happily, it gave us an excuse to drive along the border of the Burren, a desolate limestone area that is stark but beautiful.

Fast-forward several hours. After a long drive north, along which we saw some pretty mountains north of Sligo (including the poet Yeats’ favorite mountain, the distinctive Ben Bulben), we arrived in Donegal. It was about 7:00, and Donegal was much bigger than I had remembered (not huge – just bigger than I’d remembered). I beat a hasty retreat out of the town center and went back to a B and B for which I had seen a sign, and it turned out to have a room. It also had the bonus of being on the bay, which was quite lovely.

We walked into town to get supper, and picked a great-seeming restaurant. The food was good, but it took about forty minutes for me to get a burger and Mer to get a cup of soup. That was frustrating, and I’m not sure what took so long.

We got back to the B and B and jumped in the car to drive another forty minutes west, to the small town of Kilcar, to go to a pub to hear a musician we met the last time we were in Ireland, fourteen years ago. We found the pub around 10:15 (the singer was supposed to go on at 10:00), but we were surprised to find the pub empty except for the barkeeper. The owner of the pub, a very friendly man, came in after a few minutes to explain that the singer could not make it. Minus one for Our Hero again. We did get to chat about the Donegal area with the owner for about twenty minutes. It was a long drive back, and we did not get back to the B and B until about 11:15.

Happy note there – there was still just enough daylight to make out the bay, so we sat and watched it for a minute or two, until Mer declared it was cold, so we headed in. Overall, not the greatest day of touring, but not terrible – I count myself coming in at a score of zero for the day. But we are in Donegal, which was the goal, so I hope to have more successful days coming in the next few.

To make up for what was almost a sixteen-hour day yesterday, Mer had a mellow day planned for today. We got a later start, going out in the town to look for breakfast. I picked a restaurant based on the facts that it was serving breakfast and I knew it had internet access (our hostel’s internet connection is very poor, even when it is working). I needed to update my blog, and I’d promised a few folks that I would check my e-mail daily. Word to the the wise, though – when you order your very excellent three-egg omelets, check on the price when you enter the restaurant. Two omelets and two glasses of tap water came out to over thirty dollars. Ouch.

We finished up breakfast around 10:00, and after a brief stop in the room, we went to the town’s TI (Tourist Information center), which has a very small museum on the history of Kenmare. It was informative, telling about the town’s clan history and the founding of the town in the 1800s or so (it surprised me how late it was). The museum told about a few key figures, from hated town manager/agents to beloved priests and nuns, and it told of the rise and fall of the Kenmare lace trade. It had a panel or two on the Famine as well, and some of the measures taken to try to help local people. It only took about thirty minutes to see everything, but I enjoyed it.

We went back to the car and headed back toward the Killarney National Park, but before we got back to the Muckross House area, as I was expecting, we turned off at Kissane Sheep Farm. Mer wanted to see the demonstrations of sheep herding and sheep shearing. The farm was closed, but was going to have a demonstration at 1:00, which gave us a little over an hour to do something else.

Happily, that something else was to go see a waterfall, the Torc waterfall, near the Muckross House. I had seen signs to it when we were there on Tuesday, and I had dropped a subtle hint or two (or three). The waterfall was a short and very pretty walk from the parking lot, and we walked next to a stream the whole way, in the middle of a dense forest. The waterfall did not disappoint, and we spent about fifteen minutes just sitting next to the stream watching the water.

We headed back to the sheep farm, and this time they were open. We were the first people there, so we got to chat a little with the woman taking money, who is  the sheep dogs’ trainer, and she is from Germany. We also got to pet one of the farm cats. More people trickled in, and around 1:00 we were joined by a tour bus, and the demonstration was ready to go. We headed out to a platform that overlooked some astonishingly beautiful fields and grazing lands, and we were shown four different border collies doing their jobs.

It was amazing – the dogs responded to called-out commands, and they roamed all over the field and hills chasing and herding sheep. There were very fast, smart, and really effective at their jobs. They worked well as a team, and the handler never even had to move to get all the sheep gathered and in a pen.

We headed over to the barn, where we got to see a large, muscular man manhandle a sheep and shear its wool. He was able to shear the sheep in about three minutes, and the farmer said the shearer could do about three hundred sheep a day during busy season. The farm has about fifteen hundred adult sheep, and around a thousand lambs currently. Three of the lambs had been born within the last week, and they were awfully cute.

Having been impressed by one farm, we headed to several others in the form of the Muckross Traditional Farms, in the park near the Muckross House. This collection of three farmhouses and associated buildings preserves the look and traditional means of farming from about 1930, before electricity came to rural Ireland (the last parts of Ireland to get electricity got it in the 1970s).

The three farmhouses represented typical ones from a small farm (about twenty acres), a medium farm (about fifty acres), and a large farm (a hundred acres). Each farm had a woman in the house to explain how the farm ran, and they offered us bread that was made over the hearth in the house (it was quite good). The small farm was quite basic, with just two rooms, with the children sleeping in the main room and the parents sleeping in their own room. The medium farm added one room, a second bedroom for the children. The large farm was quite elaborate by comparison, with several rooms, including two dining rooms.

The farm had live animals, including two huge Clydesdale horses. There were a couple of kittens we saw (and we got to pet one), and we saw a four-day-old donkey who looked ready to be out in the pasture. There were puppies, and chickens, and turkeys, and even a peacock. All of this was surrounded by the mountains of the park, so it was a very pleasant walk as well as an education.

After we finished up the farm, around 4:30, Mer let me have my way. We headed back to the car, and started to head toward Kenmare, but I was distracted by a sign for “The Meeting of the Waters.” It was a fifteen-minute hike from the parking lot, and behind a tea room, but it was a beautiful and secluded spot where the three lakes all joined together in a narrow channel. We sat there for several minutes, and then wandered over to a small path that led to the double-arched bridge we had seen, called the Weir Bridge. The walk was a bit rough, but short, and the view from the bridge was looking over a lake at several mountains, so it was worthwhile.

We got back to the car and this time did head back to Kenmare. We parked the car and, after a brief stop in the room, went out to supper at a local bar and restaurant, Davitt’s. We got a table, and within a few minutes two musicians were setting up right in front of us. The man played the fiddle, and the woman played guitar and sang. We got to hear over thirty minutes of music while we ate, which, as they say here, was grand.

Finally, being somewhat addicted to dessert, we picked up some ice cream bars and candy bars from the grocery store, and we found a bench in a park on which to eat them. The evening was very fine, and it was a mellow way to end the first week of touring. I get to take over now, which should be interesting, since I have only some idea of what to do and where to go.

Life has many choices, and our hostel has helped out by removing one of them – the pesky shower controls. These have been replaced by a single “on” button that shoots out as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it water, for about forty-five seconds at a time, after which you can hit the button again. It certainly saves water, as my shower lasted all of about three minutes.

Mer had us up early and on the road by about 7:15 this morning. We headed west and north out onto the Ring of Kerry. It was early enough that we did not meet much traffic, and none of the later-in-the-day tour buses. We turned off the “main” road (if such a thing exists in Ireland), and we turned onto an often-one-lane road where the speed limit still fluctuated between 45 and 60 mph. Driving in Ireland often feels like a driving video game, but with sheep in the road sometimes.

We drove far out on to the Iveragh Peninsula (which is where people do the famous Ring of Kerry loop drive), on to the Ring of Skellig. This path is closed to tour buses, as the roads are far too narrow to accommodate them. If you meet an oncoming car, you have to pull over as far as you can into the bushes, and slow to a crawl or a stop until the other car gets past. It is interesting.

Mer directed us over an excitingly narrow pass that lacked drop-offs, but made up for it in blind, one-lane, hairpin turns. The views all along the drive were tremendous — fields, mountains, ocean, cute towns. After about two hours, we arrived at our destination, Portmagee, where we were supposed to catch a boat out to Skellig Michael, a jut of rock seven miles out in the ocean that housed a monastery from about 600 to about 1100. Sadly, one of the two boats going out was broken, so they asked us to come back at 2:00 (we were scheduled for 9:30). There was nothing we could do about it, so we agreed, but it meant back-tracking over the same road on which we had come in, to go back one hour to get to another sight Mer wanted to see.

But first, food. My breakfast of a granola bar and one roll had worn thin, so I insisted on getting some food. Mer knows that one of the best ways to keep me happy is to keep me fed, so she agreed. We overshot our destination by about a mile so I could go to a market and buy two chicken sandwiches and two candy bars for our very early lunch. We ate them on a covered patio overlooking the ocean.

After lunch, we headed down another horse-track-width road to Derrynane House, the home of Daniel O’Connell. Daniel O’Connell is known in Ireland as “The Liberator,” as he fought for the rights of Irish Catholics during the 1800s, using non-violence, through law and politics. His home is fairly simple, although a grateful Catholic community built him a chapel next to his house. The grounds are amazing and fairly wild, and are now a national park. To tour the house costs a little, but it was free on our Heritage Cards. The tour took about a half hour, which was followed by a twenty-minute film on the life of O’Connell. It was interesting. After the tour and film, we took a quick glance at the chapel (simple, but nice) and the fancy carriage O’Connell’s supporters gave him when he was released from a several-month prison term.

By then, we had to drive the hour back to the boat for the tour. Since Skellig Michael is seven miles out in the ocean, it took about an hour to get out there. The trip was lovely, with calm seas, lots of sun, and great views of all three peninsulas (Beara, Kerry, and Dingle).

Next to Skellig Michael is Little Skellig, a bird sanctuary. It roosts about sixty thousand gannets, which are large white sea birds. As you approach the island, it looks as if it is covered in snow.

Skellig Michael looms over the sea. It is about seven hundred feet high, with no vegetation other than grasses. The island seems to come straight out of the sea. We pulled in to a dock in a crack in the rock, and filed off the boat. We were there to hike up six hundred very steep steps that lacked any guard rails, and usually had a nasty fall off one side. Interesting. The prize was a collection of beehive huts and a few other primitive buildings at the very top.

I was worried my fear of heights would kick in, and Mer was worried she might trip. We made it about halfway up when Mer’s fear of tripping really began to worry her. A guide who lives on the island was coming down, and she told us the steps got steeper at the top, and there was a ledge that needed to be crossed. That worried me, so after talking things over with the guide, we all headed down, with the help of another guide. Mer was disappointed, but after fifteen or twenty minutes, we went back up the steps a little ways to a viewing point and sat there for ten minutes to enjoy the view (and the rather fun noise puffin birds make, which sounds like small chainsaws).

Back on the boat,  the captain took us halfway around the island to show us the lighthouses. Along the way, we saw two seals sunning themselves. We then were treated to a close-up view of Little Skellig and its sixty thousand inhabitants. We were not pooped on, but I got some secondary splatter on a near-miss.

The seas on the trip back were rougher, and we got wet from spray a few times. This reinforced to us that neither Mer nor I am fit to be a sailor. It was fun on one trip, but I think that would get old pretty quickly.

After the hour back on the boat, we still had the two-hour car drive, and it was already 6:30. So, we headed back over the same stretch of road for the fourth time. About seventy-five minutes into the drive, we did take a short detour to go see a well-preserved two-thousand-year-old ring fort that was made by piling stones on one another (no mortar). We ran into a charming older Irish couple in this remote fort, and chatted with them briefly. The fort was being besieged by a herd of cows and sheep, but they must have a treaty in place, because they let us pass.

We finally got back to Kenmare a little after 9:00, and we found a pub/restaurant still serving food around 9:30. That was happy, because shortly thereafter, the live music started. We tried a bunch of times to find live music in Kinsale, and only found it by accident at the Tap Tavern. In Kenmare, we have heard strains of music coming out of multiple places on both nights we have been here. Our musician played guitar and sang, and we got to hear him for over a half hour before we were done eating. It was very pleasant.

After supper, we found that the local ice cream shop was still open, so we tried it. My cookies and cream was only okay, but Mer got some unusual flavors that she liked (a banana-toffee mixture and a candy ice cream). Oh – if an Irish ice cream place puts fudge pieces on your ice cream, it means soft caramels. Just for your information.
We got back to the hostel at dark – the first time that has happened on this vacation, since evening comes so late here. Here is hoping things go a little more according to Mer’s plan tomorrow.

We bid our hostess Mary goodbye this morning. If anyone ever has reason to be in Kinsale, look up the Seagull – Mary was willing to do just about anything to make our stay nicer. As she would say – a grand woman.

We jumped in the car and headed northwest. The landscape change dramatically as soon as we left County Cork and entered Kerry – suddenly there were numerous mountains, and they were either covered in forest and heather or were rough stone and grasses. It was very beautiful. We headed on into Killarney National Park, to the Muckross House and gardens.

Oh, my, was that amazing. The house is very fine – a large mansion built in the 1860s, and donated to Ireland in the late 1920s. Much of the furniture is original, and the house is in excellent shape. What is most eye-catching is the setting – it overlooks Lake Muckross, which is surrounded by mountains covered in trees and purple heather. It was gorgeous.

We used our Heritage Cards we had bought back in Kinsale to book a tour of the house for free, but it was scheduled for about forty minutes later. So, we took the opportunity to roam the grounds and part of the gardens. I stumbled across a small, rough staircase made of rock, and we took it up into a rock garden, where the path was carved rock, and bedrock mixed in with the flowers and trees. It was very private-feeling, and there were numerous rock paths around. I loved it. After we explored the rock garden, we meandered down to Lake Muckross, where we took in the beauty as best we could. By then it was time for the tour.

The house tour lasted about an hour, and was well done. Our group was a bit large, consisting of about twenty-five people (including a family that had been with us on the Kinsale history walk yesterday). The main thing Mer and I took away was that we should never host a sovereign; it seems the owners of the house prepared for THREE years for a visit by Queen Victoria, a visit which lasted two nights. Sheesh. The house was elegant, and it was a good tour.

After the house tour, we had about twenty minutes before we had to head off to the hostel where we would be staying, so we explored more of the gardens, finding another small rock garden, a small stream garden, and a lower lawn garden, all of which were designed to make one feel solitude. The grounds are excellent (and free to the public).

We got back in the car and drove out to Kenmare, which is at the head of the Beara Peninsula. As we left the national park, we were treated to several dramatic views, which caused me to tell Mer that I thought I had just seen Michael with a flaming sword (i.e., guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden). Amazing. The views from a pull-off named The Ladies View were breathtaking.

We checked in to our hostel (in a large double room with a private bath), and headed back out again after a short rest. We grabbed lunch from a market, and headed off. Mer told me we were doing a driving tour of the Beara Peninsula. I have to admit I was not thrilled; the roads were very narrow, and the drivers were driving very fast. Still, off we went. I’m very glad we did.

There were so many “Wow!” moments that the drive is a bit hard to describe. The drive went along a bay (oddly called the Kenmare River), then up and up and up over Healy Pass on a winding and almost one-lane road. Once over the pass, the road wound down to the sea again, to Bantry Bay, and then back up over another pass. The terrain changed over and over again, from small fields to ocean to almost alien-looking landscapes of rock and grass. It was the most spectacular drive I can ever remember making.

My favorite part was Healy Pass. We pulled off at one spot, and Mer commented on how quiet it was – there were no cars or even birdsongs (because there were no trees). We could hear the occasional bleat of a sheep (yes, there were free-roaming sheep in the road, just to make driving even more interesting). The pull-off looked out over several mountains and a lake far below. It was amazing.

We got a tad lost on the way back to Kenmare, which ended up being a fifteen-minute detour that was also pretty, as it took us down to the ocean. Once back in town, we parked the car and had supper at a local Italian restaurant (Bella Vita), followed by ice cream from the market, which was still open. We ate the ice cream back at the hostel, and then called it a night.

Mer had us up a bit earlier than we were the last few days, and after breakfast, I found out why. We headed down to the Tourist Information Center, where around 9:00 we met up with Barry, a local man who gives really entertaining and informative tours of Kinsale. We headed off with Barry and seven other Americans, which kept the narrative personal. Barry took us on a short walk to the harbor, and up the hill to where part of the old town wall is located, and then down to the main square where the harbor used to come up to, and finished off at the courthouse. Along the way, he told us about the Battle of Kinsale, and the British fortification of the town after they won that battle. He also said how the battle had ripple effects down to recent times – it seems that two of the main Irish leaders in the battle were from northern Ireland, and their land was confiscated and given over to Protestant Scottish settlers. This led more or less directly to Northern Ireland’s being separated from the Republic after the 1921 independence.

After the tour, we grabbed the bus back to Cork, to go pick up The Car. The car that gets driven on the wrong side of the road. By me. In a stick-shift. Yay. I did decide to pay the not-cheap option of getting full coverage on the car — I have seen too may Irish roads to be relaxed about insurance.

We drove out of Cork on the way east to Cobh (pronounced “cove”). A few thoughts about driving in Ireland – traffic laws are suggestions. Speed limits can be optional, no-passing zones can force you onto the shoulder to avoid oncoming passing traffic, parking in one lane of a two-lane road is common. Oh, yeah – and they drive on the wrong side of the road. Still, I managed, although the driving takes much of my attention, which makes me feel as if I’m nineteen again.

We parked in Cobh by Cobh’s huge and central cathedral. It seemed like a huge cathedral for a smaller town, but the town is one of the busiest ports in Ireland. I suspect there is some money in town. But we were there to see “The Titanic Experience” — an interactive museum about the Titanic.

The Titanic’s last port of call before it sailed across the Atlantic was Cobh (Queenstown at the time). The museum actually is situated in the old ticket office, and you can recognize the building in old pictures; 123 people boarded the Titanic at Cobh, and a handful got off there.

The museum was fairly small, but excellent. They had mockups of a third-class and a first-class room, and the third-class room was not too bad, actually. It had electric lights and running water, and food was included with the ticket (that was not common at the time). The first-class room (which cost $69,000 in today’s money) was not terribly big, but it did get the user access to the first-class amenities, like the dining and reading rooms.

The last room in the museum told all the things that went wrong on the trip, and it was amazing how they piled up — the ship was going near maximum speed at night through an area known to have icebergs. The radio operators did not work for the ship (they were private operators), and they did not pass on all the ice warnings they received. The binoculars were missing from the lookout tower, so the lookouts had to rely on their eyes only. A sudden ten-degree temperature drop (common around icebergs) was ignored. There were a few more things that I forget as well, but many things went wrong on the Titanic.

We grabbed a quick supermarket late lunch, and headed back to the car. Mer had me drive further east, to the small coastal town of Ardmore. Ardmore has an amazing beach (where I waded in the Atlantic), a path along a dramatic (but still safe) cliff area , a still-standing round tower, and a couple of holy wells. On top of that, the town was very well-kept and cute, and it had a tea room/coffee shop with excellent cupcakes.

We got to hear an older man playing guitar and singing, and he was very talented. I chatted with him for a few minutes, and he plays five instruments in all, and he leads tours of the cliff walk. Sadly, as it was after 5:00, he was done for the evening, but that was a fun encounter. Previously, on the beach, a nice man took our picture, and we chatted for a minute or two about how he was trying to train his puppy to like the ocean (the puppy was not so sure about it).

We did the cliff walk at a leisurely pace, and wandered around the church and round tower and cemetery when we got there. We still noticed the use of Scripture quotations on many of the headstones, although it was not quite so common on the headstones of the last thirty years (although it still happened on some of them). Sadly, the round tower is closed to the public, but it is in great shape. The church was in ruins with no roof, but the walls were still intact.

Our walk got us back to town and the car. The drive back to Kinsale was okay, although I stayed in the slow lane of any roads that had two lanes, just to be on the safe side. Back in Kinsale, we ate again at the Indian restaurant, Cobra Tandoori, as we had on Friday. It was still excellent. After supper, we checked e-mail and updated the blog by using the Tap Tavern’s internet access, chatted with a couple of Americans from the New York area, and then came home.

Mer seemed to glory in her returned luggage, with the enclosed makeup, going through her normal morning routine before we went down for breakfast a little after 8:30. We had another fine breakfast of (Irish) bacon and eggs and toast, and then we were on our touring way.

We started the day out by going to a Methodist church in town for Sunday services. As an aside, we were both amused when we told our Catholic hostess we were going to the Methodist church in town and she told us how to get to the Irish-Anglican church. I guess we Protestants are all the same.

We were welcomed warmly by a man named Billy and the pastor of the church, who comes down from Cork (eleven miles) every Sunday before going back to Cork for services there. We came to understand the congregation was small, but today it was tiny — there were Mer and I, another American, a woman from the Dublin area, the pastor, the organist (Valerie), and Billy. That was it. Still, it was a moving and meaningful service. The pastor spoke on the importance of thanksgiving and living a life of thanksgiving – of finding ways to thank God in all circumstances. After reading from Luke and Numbers (about the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, but only one of whom came back to thank Jesus, and about the Israelites complaining about the lack of meat when wandering in the wilderness), the pastor quoted libreally from a variety of texts from acorss the ages, and even from some of his original poetry. He never strayed far from the Biblical texts, though, and that helped keep the sermon focused.

The music of the church was interesting. We sang three hymns and one worpship song. We thought we knew all the songs, and we did, but two of the hymns (“For the Beauty of the Earth” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) were both set to music we didn’t know.

We hung around after church chatting with Billy and Valerie, and they were kind enough to invite us out for coffee. We went to a nearby restaurant, and Bill bought us a scone and a hot chocolate, and we chatted for about forty-five minutes. Valerie is a cattle farmer with her husband, and Billy is a retired carpenter. They were lively and interesting people. When Billy found out Meredith was an English teacher, he quoted a Wordsworth poem from memory, a poem about a singing Scottish woman. It was lovely to start with, and was made even better by his accent.

Speaking of accents, we found out from Billy and Valerie that there is a variety of accents in Ireland. Billy commented he had to listen hard to the pastor because the pastor had a thick Dublin accent. When they found out we were going west later this week, Billy and Valerie both agreed that we would encounter stronger accents.

After coffee, we went back to the room to change clothes and head out. Mer wanted to go to the local castle, Desmond Castle, which is a small castle built in the 1500s. The castle has been a home, a jail, a workhouse, and a training building for troops. It is now restored, and the main floor is about the history of the castle. The second floor is dedicated to the prison area and to a wine museum, which also spreads to the third floor. Our guide in the main room explained that while Ireland makes almost no wine, after various defeats and after the famine, Irish who emigrated often went to France or Spain, where some of them became very successful vineyard owners. Later Irish did the same in America and Australia. The wine section was interesting to me when it was talking about history, but my mind glazed over when the information guides started to mention various types of wine.

After the castle, we went down the hill to Sundays, a local ice cream place with a fifties American Diner theme. The ice cream was a little small in portion compared to what we are used to, but it was good quality.

Since Kinsale is on an excellent harbor, it seemed good to tour it, so Mer got us on a one-hour boat tour of the harbor. We did not learn too much that was new (that we had not heard at Charles Fort or at the history museum), but it was a perfect day to be sitting on a boat. We were all the way in front, even in front of the helmsman. Our seat held four people, and we sat next to a charming couple on vacation from Dublin. They were kind enough to recommend several places to see in western Cork.

Back on land, Mer had us walk along the now very familiar low road, out toward Charles
Fort. We ended up in a pub called Bulman’s around 4:30, where Mer’s guidebook said there would be traditional Irish music. For once, the guidebook was wrong, and there was no traditional music today. We grabbed an order of fries (chips) and did take some time to sit across the street in the parking area, looking out over the bay and enjoying the early evening air.

We walked back to town, and after a brief stop in the room, we found a pizza place, where we got takeout (“take away”) pizza. We took it back to the B and B, where we ate it outside on a bench.

After supper, we popped down to the Tap Tavern, where our hostess said I could use the wifi internet to check on mail from home and to update the blog. That worked fine, and since it was early on a Sunday evening, the pub was quite quiet. We wrapped up our internet needs, made a trip to the bank to get some cash, and were back in our room before 9:00. The early evening and mellow pace of the day certainly qualifies as a day of rest on a Riordan tour of Europe.

Mer and I set an alarm for 8:00, which seemed to come pretty early. Our plan to counter jetlag works, but it does mean resisting sleep some, and I could have slept for a couple more hours this morning. We got up and got ready, and sat outside of our B and B while our hostess got our table ready. Breakfast was mercifully soft (scrambled eggs and bacon), so I did not have to worry too much about my broken tooth.

After breakfast, it was time to take care of that tooth. Mer and I got to the dentist’s office about 9:30, and we were seen before 10:00, which is pretty good for a drop-in appointment. The dentist was very nice, and he was able to put a temporary patch on my tooth. I am very grateful to modern medicine, and it never ceases to amaze me. I thought they might have to yank the tooth, but he put a putty in my mouth, molded it to shape, and then shone an ultraviolet light on the putty to make it harden. Magic. My tooth should be fine for vacation and until I can see my regular dentist.

After our exciting tour of the dentist’s office and a brief stop at our room in the B and B, we walked downtown to the local history museum. We had to wait a few minutes for it to open, but we spent them happily sitting on separate benches in a small square — Mer’s bench was in the sun, and mine was in the shade.

Once the local museum opened up, we were able to go in. We met a very kind and informative woman volunteer who specialized in Celtic history. She told us about the historical importance of Kinsale’s harbor (Ireland’s closest large harbor to mainland Europe), about a couple of battles fought in Kinsale, about the Lusitania being sunk off the coast, about the underground Catholic Irish culture when it was banned by England, and more. She was delightful. The museum is very eclectic, with everything from ice saws to pictures of famous Irish explorers to a “giant’s” boot (the man was 8′ 2″ tall) to artifacts from the Lusitania to pieces of the old town wall. It was fun in itself, but the guide to whom we talked several times really made the place for us.

Since it was about 12:00, we went to a local store to buy chicken wraps for lunch. Europe is expensive, especially food, so we skipped eating at a restaurant. Even so, lunch was eight euros (about eleven dollars). Happily, the food was very good.

After lunch, we took the low road path back out to Charles Fort, where we had been the night before, when it had been closed. Now, we wanted to tour the inside. I’m glad we did — while the buildings have no roofs or interior structures anymore because of a fire set in 1923 during the Irish Civil War, the stone exteriors all stand, so it is easy to see how the fort was laid out. It is huge — twelve acres are covered inside the fort, and the views of the bay are amazing. We caught a live guided tour at 2:00, and then we wandered the fort freely. I think we spent about three hours total in the fort, and learned about fort construction in the age of cannons, about how the enlisted men lived (not very well, with low pay and twelve men to a room), and about the weakness of Charles Fort (it commanded the sea in front of it, but there was ground higher than it behind it, so it was vulnerable to a land assault, which happened in the one battle the fort experienced).

Just outside the fort is a foot path that follows the coast for several miles. Mer did not feel we had time for that, but we did wander about a half mile down the path to admire the bay and Charles Fort. After a brief rest on a bench, we headed back toward town, but made a detour to go see a small church and its cemetery. We love to visit cemeteries when we travel, because they usually have great views. The views in this cemetery were blocked by trees, but the cemetery itself was interesting, with many worn gravestones, a nice gravel path, and its own kind of beauty. As this was the second cemetery to which we had been in Kinsale, we started to draw the conclusion that many headstones quote Scripture on the stone, and it’s touching to see what verse the family picked.

We then headed back into town, where we were delighted to discover that Mer’s missing bag was waiting for us at the B and B. She freshened up a bit, and then we went to Jim Edward’s pub for supper, where we had an excellent meal (great bread, and lasagna for me and soup for Mer).

Then, just to make sure we would sleep really really well, we took the two-mile walk out of town and around the bay to get to the older James Fort. The walk was very pretty, especially on the great weather day we had, which was good, as the actual fort was underwhelming when compared to Charles Fort. While James Fort is free, the stronghold of the fort was locked up, and the outer walls were earthen embankments. They gave great views, but were less intimidating than stone walls. We wandered down to the seaside tower that used to pull up a heavy chain to block ships when needed, and then we wandered the two miles back to town.

We were not quite done with the evening – after a short stop at the room, we went down to the pub owned by our hostess, which is called The Tap Tavern. They had live music, and we listened for about forty-five minutes, and we even danced twice, on very tired legs. That wrapped up our second day in Kinsale.