Ring of Kerry Road Trip

I was posted to Kerry for 5 weeks in February. It sucked because the day I left Cork city was the first day of Chinese New Year and the thought of spending CNY all alone was so depressing :(

This year was the first year that I've spent CNY without my family, but I have friends who are my second family here in Cork to spend most of the celebrations with me! 

 Our feast!! 

Homemade, modified version of yee sang!! 

Kerry turned out to be amazing though!!

Double A came to visit and we had a road trip together around Ring of Kerry!! 

Kudos to A for driving a manual car around the ring. The roads were extremely narrow and steep! Usually, the tour buses would drive clockwise and hence, they usually recommend people to drive counter-clockwise so we wouldn't be delayed by the slow moving buses. However, there's a risk that we might go head-on with the buses! 

So, we ended up choosing the clockwise (to be safe) and thankfully, there weren't a lot of buses so we managed to finish the ring within one day (with only a few attractions left out)!

I was based in Tralee, Kerry. So we started off our journey from Tralee to Killorglin, the first stop of our Ring Journey~

We drove passed Glenbeigh because the roads to Glenbeigh/Rossbeigh was close and we even tried to reroute to Rossbeigh Beach but we have no idea where the GPS was leading us..

(Mainly because I am a terrible GPS navigator...)

So we decided to skip Glenbeigh/Rossbeigh and go straight to Caherciveen! 

We wanted to visit the Cahergal Stone Fort, one of the medieval stone forts to be found on ring of Kerry...

Unfortunately, the entrance was closed. I think they usually close all tourist attractions around Winter/early Spring because it's not the peak season, which explained why there weren't many tour buses as well...

So, here's a picture of us pointing at the stone fort xD

We saw some sheeps and A decided to ask if we could take a picture with the sheeps. The owner was so nice to allow us!

So cute and fluffyyyy! To be honest, it was quite heavy too..

We saw a horse as well but it totally ignored us..

Ballycarbery Castle, just 3km away from the stone fort, was a castle built in 1398 but due to wear and tear, the castle was left with less than half of its original now.

We were famished at that point and decided to have picnic at Ballycarbery Castle!

Sandwiches x Teh Tarik

We decided to skip Barracks Heritage Centre but apparently, it's one of the famous tourist attraction of Caherciveen...well, a picture will do 8D

Our next stop was a beach! I'm not sure if it's Ballinskellig beach or Waterville Beach...

but we skipped Kells and the Skellig Chocolate factory experience (where you get to try unlimited chocolate and experience the whole chocolate manufacturing process)!!

 Photobombed by an American couple! They're so cute! We actually met them again when we had our dinner!! 

Come to think of it, we actually skipped a lot of the places...we tried our best to fit everything into one day because we wanted to tour dingle as well. Most of the attractions are beaches and they're pretty similar. Therefore, we decided to just view them inside our car..

Drove passed Caherdaniel, Sneem and stopped by at Kenmare. Kenmare was a lovely town with lots of restaurants! We wasted around 20 minutes deciding which restaurant to have our dinner in Kenmare, but ended up having it in Killarney instead =__="

Killarney was our last stop, and probably the highlight of the trip. 

We visited Killarney National Park and experienced jaunting car (horse carriage)~ It was 10 euros per head, inclusive of passing through Muckross Abbey, touring the Muckross House and Torc Waterfall. 

 Muckross House

 Muckross Abbey

 Torc Waterfall

Our tour ended around 6:30pm, just in time for dinner~ 

Quilans Seafood Bar 

77 High Street

Killarney, Kerry

+353 (064) 662 0666

They have another branch in Tralee as well and I had been dying to try their fish and chips, since I would walked past it everyday on the way to the hospital. 

 Seafood Chowder (€6.95)

 Salmon & Salad  (€13.95)

 Sea bass & Salad  (€13.95)

 Beer battered cod fish & chips (€11.95)

 Squid & Chips  (€13.95)

 Onion rings  (€2.50)

There are still a lot of places in Killarney & the ring of kerry which we didn't have the chance to visit. Hopefully, we could visit again in the future! 

Headed home to rest as we went to tour Dingle for the next day! 

Thank you guys ♥