Road trips involve spending loads of time in the car. Of course, this is what also happened during our Ireland trip, whether it was driving from A to B or because of a lot of rain. ‘Driving and looking’ was the motto!
In total, we were lucky with the weather. And as we expected it, we weren’t to surprised about some things not working out the way we wanted it.
For the ultimate Ireland flash, we headed from Galway to the Dingle Peninsula.
Dingle and the Dingle Peninsula
The Dingle Peninsula is located in south western Ireland and stretches 50km along the Atlantic Ocean.
Beautiful cliffs, wild beaches like Inch Beach and islands off the coast are reason enough for people like us to spend one day on Ring of Kerry’s less crowded northern neighbour.
The most beautiful route was the Slea Head Drive on the western tip. It looked surreal and painted.
We can recommend the café ‘Slea Head Farm’ where you will have an amazing view over the windy scenario.
In total, we loved the Dingle Peninsula even more than Ring of Kerry. But that’s just a matter of taste. The Dingle Peninsula is also called Ring of Kerry’s beautiful sister. Therefore we can’t be that wrong about it.
The town of Dingle itself is a cute place. It’s located at the harbour and offers a huge variety of fish and seafood restaurants. They’re really proud of their famous Dingle Ice Cream on the one side.
On the other side they have their own dolphin called Fungie who has lived in and near the harbour of Dingle for many years and is exploited for tourist use. Why not!
Ring of Kerry
Ring of Kerry really didn’t disappoint us. You should plan a whole relaxed day for this part of Ireland. Of course even more, if you want to hike here and there.
Our first stop was at the beautiful Rossbeigh Beach. An endless long beach which isn’t really inviting for sun bathing but maybe for a walk at the beach. If the wind doesn’t blow you away.
We also made it to Valentia Island and the Foilhommerum Bay. We didn’t make it to the view point on the hill (we forgot its name) but it’s signposted and easy to find.
The Skellig Ring with the famous Kerry Cliffs, the beautiful St. Finan’s Bay and Skellig’s Chocolate Factory is on the most western point of the island.
The Kerry Cliffs were insanely beautiful. But the wind was abnormally strong so we couldn’t stay there for too long. The wind tried it’s very best to just blow us away. Additionally, we were afraid of losing our camera. Yes, we’re materialistic cowards.
The Chocolate Factory was madness. First of all, there were so many families with kids who expressed their delight really loudly. And secondly, the chocolate was so good and everyone could do a little chocolate tasting which delighted me. We actually just came here because our Airbnb host recommended it to us. We didn’t regret our visit.
In the end, we headed back to the Ring of Kerry. To be exactly to the Ring of Kerry Lookout.
There’s not much to say about it than the view is spectacular and you can easily spend some time here just looking.
Killarney & Killarney National Park
Killarney itself is a nice little town with many restaurants and pubs. Perfect if you’re hungry and thirsty. Besides from that, it’s just the next bigger town near the Ring of Kerry.
More beautiful and interesting is the Killarney National Park with its famous Ladies View named after Queen Victoria in the 19th century who used to come here for vacations with friends.
Furthermore, we drove along the Muckross Lake which is one of the three large lakes of the National Park.
My personal favourite: Gap of Dunloe. It’s my favourite because we arrived late and had the place almost for ourselves. It’s a dreamy landscape. However, the dream was over really quick when it started raining again.
Kinsale and Cobh
On our onward journey from Kerry towards Wicklow National Park, we made a detour to the south of the country. Unfortunately, not everything worked out like we planned.
The plan was to see and walk around in the cute town of Kinsale. But the weather has scotched that. We even went to a super market to get some coffee waiting for the rain to stop. But it didn’t.
And so we headed to the next town called Cobh (it’s pronounced ‘cough’ as I learned later). We had lunch here and saw the famous view with the ‘San Francisco’ like houses and the cathedral behind them. Thank God the rain was gone for a moment and the day didn’t feel like a waste of time any longer!