Killarney National Park

Today we spent the day at the Killarney National Park.  What a beautiful place! I really wish it were a little bit warmer, but I'm always cold, so nothing unusual that I thought it was nippy.  We started at Muckross House and were talked into taking a Jaunting Cart Tour.  It was a nice ride on a horse drawn carriage, the horse's name was Torey.  We were brought to the Torc Waterfall which was about a 10 minute walk from where the carriage let us off.  It was very pretty, and my friend Tracey would have loved all the moss everywhere.  I tried to text her a picture of it, but for some reason we haven't been able to send a single picture text yet.  The regular texts are working, but add a photo and out comes the red "not delivered" notice.  It's very frustrating!  That was €10 each plus €5 for a tip (for the horse, the driver said).  We were dropped back at the house, which you can only see on a tour, so for another €7.50 each we took the tour.  It was very informative, but no pictures were allowed.  There was a lot of hoopla about Queen Victoria staying in the house and all the preparations that went into, and in the long run she only stayed 2 days!  They even built a fire escape from her bedroom window, because it seems she was extremely afraid of fire.  From outside, the window was probably about 5 feet from the ground, I guess queens don't jump.  From there we went practically across the street from the entrance to eat at a place called Molly Darcys Restaurant.  The food was excellent.  My brothers each had fish and chips, Bubba had a fish pie and I had a root vegetable and lentil pie.  Mine was yummy!  Of course I was full half way through, but nothing new there.  The waitress told us the Muckross Friary was right across the street, and not a long walk, so we went.  Well, it seems we took the wrong road.  Jim and Len gave up, but Bubba and I kept walking and finally found it.  Of course it is another ruin, but pretty none the less.  We took lots of pictures, I know, what a surprise!  There was a cemetery too, so I took some pictures of the Celtic crosses, there was quite a mix of very old and newly planted souls through out the whole place.  From there it was back in the car again and off to Ross Castle and a €4 each tour there.  We made the very last tour, and this place even has a roof!  It's built as a tower, so there are a lot of stairs, and it's one long spiral staircase that they called a trip or stumble staircase.  It was purposely built with different sized steps so if they were invaded, the enemy would trip on their way up.  It's hard to believe how many people once lived in places like this.  Something interesting the guide told us was that at some point the government put a luxury tax on second homes, but only if it had a roof, so families started removing the roofs to avoid the tax, one of the reasons ther are so many in disrepair, imagine decades of a house being exposed to the elements.  All in all it was another great day on our trip... Let's see what tomorrow brings!