Goodbye Dublin, Hello Killarney

We left Dublin this morning, which meant leaving Beech Lodge B&B. Beech Lodge has one of our most favorite innkeepers EVER. His name is Gerry, and he just made us feel right at home...which was so nice being very far away from our own home. Such a nice man, who was full of smiles, who made us smile...and we were actually a little sad to leave. 

After breakfast at Beech Lodge, we drove out of the city until we reached Killarney about three and a half hours later.

With a little luck because the GPS gets a little wonky out here (we are in Ireland's second largest national park), we found our next B&B called Friar's Glen. 

It's run by Mary and John. Mary greeted us and we were so happy to find out that our room was already waiting for us. She told us where to go to lunch and what to do and see for the afternoon. I love when this happens, because it's less decision-making AND they usually point us to all the best places. 

So right away, we headed to Muckross House which looks a lot like a Downton Abbey kind of place. It's a large estate situated on a lake within the park with some mountain views. 

Muckross House, front view

Side view

This is the view from Muckross House

They have a restaurant in the gardens there. It was a lot more crowded than we imagined. Tour buses. All kinds of tourists...but the place is lovely. Tomorrow we will go back and take a tour of the inside, but today we took about an hour after lunch to walk/hike to Torc Falls. The path begins at Muckross House and you walk past the lake to get there. They have jaunting cars you can take (like a horse and buggy type thing), but after the long drive we were ready to stretch our legs. 

In front of the lake as the trail to Torc Falls began.

On the trail

The boat house

Torc Falls

Mossy woods

Selfie by the lake!!!

The horse photo bombed my lake pic...

Once we got back from Muckross House, we went to dinner at a place called Jarvey's Rest where we got to listen to traditional live Irish music with a couple of dancers now and then. It was relaxing and fun! I could've stayed all night, but they only played for about an hour. 

Dinner time!

Check out those allergen symbols. Thanks, Ireland! They are really good about that everywhere.

Good night!