4 Americans + 1 French + Ford Focus = Diabolical

Kerry is my new favorite place in Ireland, and probably will be until... forever. I cannot even begin to describe how incredibly beautiful this part of the country is, but I will explain how we got there, what we did there, and how it all went down.

The us: Luke, Drew, Rachel (Drew's sister), Hubert, and myself.

The Ford: was a Focus, but we were far from focused driving on the left side of the road.

Hubert was our fearless leader at the beginning of the trip, and since he has never driven an automatic before we started off on a bumpy ride, literally.... hard to confuse the break with the nonexistent clutch. Leaving a few hours past what we aimed for, we headed off to Kerry (west), the most beautiful of beautiful in Ireland. Six hours later we arrived in Killarney, the main and biggest town in County Kerry and arrived at our hostel Neptunes, an ok hostel with lots of cool cats and some not so cool ones as well, but it suited us just fine. That night Luke and Drew made dinner for us all and we went out to some local pubs, talked to some locals, who after hearing that I am from CA assumed that i am "living off my daddy's penny." Either way, the night went down diabolically, ended up in a club/pub by our hostel with a live cover band which played all our favorites. I found Killarney to be very friendly and alive, full of tourists and locals alike. It is a very typical Irish town, with the little streets and pubs on the corners. The next day we headed off to see some pretty things. We started at Ross Castle, just a 10 minute drive from our hostel. Ross Castle is a slab of limestone situated at the shore of a lake. The view from Ross Castle is serene and relaxing. The castle was cool, we got a look inside to how the peeps lived back in the day. It is similar to a lot of the other castles that I have visited. the most stunning and in my opinion the most of the most of Kerry was the Ring of Kerry. Now, I wasn't actually sure what the "ring" was... i thought we actually go to see it, like a museum but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Ring is actually just a road which circles the Iveragh Peninsula. This road is kind of a crazy windy one. its a bit dangerous especially with the unfamiliar left hand driving and the zooming tour buses which don't have any mercy on us to even slow down. There are signs as you drive around the ring which really gave all of us the creeps, like "52 people have died driving on the ring of Kerry in the past 4 years" or pictures of cars skidding off the mountain. The view around the ring was spectacular. Mountains, lakes, beaches, green green green, lots of cows and sheep and goats. The weather was unbelievable, we lucked out so much and even got tanned! We finished off the night with home made tacos and a night at Mustang Sally's, an American style club full knackers. They were playing music i thought i would never hear again in any public place (coolio gangster's paradise is an example) we got tired of the knackers and went back to the hostel with some Aussies that were staying there as well who just happened to be at the same club. We all eventually passed out after being shushed by the hostel staff to shut up or get out. Next day we had another excursion by Ross Castle. We rented a boat from this old man in a hat, he keeps the boats in his back yard, or so it looked like it when we walked to the docks and saw lines of clothing drying. We oared out to Inisfallen Island, an uninhabited place for us to play and roam the Mesopotamian looking bricks and remains of old churches and homes. We sailed back, ate some hot dogs, played some lame miniature golf and headed back to Dublin. I loved this trip to the 90, it was completely diabolical in every sense of the word. Sadly, Rachel left the next morning, not very diabolical. gonna miss that red head.