The Ring, Sneem and ice cream

Today we traveled around the entire Ring of Kerry, which is the mountain range on the Kerry peninsula. We stopped every so often for scenic views or explore one of the little villages. But before leaving Killarney, we made a stop at St. Mary's cathedral here in town. It was very unique from other churches I have seen because of the way they used the stone. Most of the time, I'm used to giant stone blocks, not little rocks. Out in front of the church, there's a memorial to the mass grave of children that died from the potato famine. There's a tree planted there that was planted the same time as the church was built. 

We left Killarney and started our counter-clockwise tour around the Ring. Our first stop was at a peat bog museum. Again, set up kind of like Hale Farm. There were even chickens, a peat bog pony and two Irish wolfhounds. 

 

Other stops we made were a few side-of-the-road places, including one for lunch of shepherd's pie and Waterville. 

We also saw from a distance the Skellig islands where I've been told they're filming parts of the next Star Wars episode. 

Then after another hour or so we stopped in Sneem, which I had just heard about from a former student, Sara (merci, Noëlle!) and our bus driver, Tony, highly recommended the ice cream. So we taste-tested multiple flavors and they were pretty good. 

Then back on the road for our final leg of the Ring and back to Killarney. When we arrived back in town, our EF staff had a treat planned for us: a jaunting cart ride through the national park and a visit to the castle. 

(This isn't us... This is some of the our group in the cart behind us.). 

The castle: 

And I got a pic of Michael, our driver and Tom, the horse but Michael's eyes are half shut. Oops - here it is anyways (my apologies, Michael.)

Then we had free time for dinner and we tried to find good live music for a while but we fell a little flat so we walked back to the hotel and it's finally bedtime! Night!!