Guinness, St. Patrick’s Day, and red heads are all stereotypical wrong answers for how to experience authentic Ireland. Traveling to Ireland during rainy season in February is absolutely the right answer. We obviously instinctively knew this and made it happen. Guess what!? Ireland absolutely blew our minds and exceeded our wildest dreams (Moody Blues song anyone? I guess you could also insert the Taylor Swift song too, but Moody Blues seems more fitting for this occasion). This is in the top tier of places we traveled to that surprised us more than we expected. Don’t worry, I’ll ease up on the hard sell of Ireland 😉.
Buuut, I do have to say outside of the actual natural beauty, we enjoyed the logistical beauty of traveling to Ireland. Even though it is not part of the UK, the countries have a Common Travel Area agreement. With the Common Travel Area, we don’t have to go through border control when we return AND we also can get our mobile boarding passes online. This saves a TON of time! As most of you know traveling in the US, you just get your boarding pass as part of the check in process. You can get it sent to you before you even get to the airport. That’s not the case here.
When we travel out of the UK to another country in the EU, we have to queue at the airport to get our boarding passes. We can’t get them through online check in. It can add 30-45 (sometimes more) minutes depending on how busy the airport is. I think this isn’t an issue for EU citizens when traveling to EU countries, but with Brexit, the UK is no longer part of the club. Additionally, when we return from a trip, we go through border control. Because the kids are not old enough to go through the self-scanning border kiosks, we must stand in line to see a physical agent. This line gets long and has probably taken us at least an hour in the busiest of times.
Anyways, back to hard selling the actual country of Ireland…
Arriving in Ireland
With a quick flight to Ireland, we landed in Cork. It was our first trip using a rental car in Europe! Now that the kids are getting bigger, we could use compact booster seats that roll up to the size of a 2L bottle. When we first moved to the UK, we made an agreement to not to travel with car seats in Europe. Traveling like that in the US we knew it just starts the trip off with a high cortisol spike. Only so many body parts to carry humans, luggage, accessories, etc. Plus, we enjoy (most times) fully experiencing the country, it’s people and culture the rugged way. Yet there is a time and place for everything. Having a car, allowed us to plan a beautiful road trip to see the Irish coast; something we wouldn’t have been able to do easily with public transportation!
Day 1: Killarney National Park
Once we arrived in Cork and got our rental car, we set off to explore Killarney National Park. While the weather was the authentic experience I alluded to above (grey and drizzly), we had some nice breaks in the rain to visit Ross Castle, Muckross House and Gardens, and Torc Waterfall.
Ross Castle is alongside a lake. We didn’t go inside it but walked around it. The kids liked climbing a tree and playing by the lakeside of course! The next stop was Muckross House and Gardens, we walked briefly around and were surprised by how tropical everything felt. I’m aware this is a manicured garden and has a variety of native and non-native plants, yet it gave off a lot of vibrancy for February! In some ways it felt like we were back in Oregon. The grounds even had a fun little stream to walk along. It led to a route where jaunting cars (think 2-wheeled cart pulled by horses) transported tourists to see sights. Lame parents that we are (joking!), we took the path by foot to see Torc Falls.
We weren’t expecting to see many waterfalls in Ireland. The beauty of the Torc waterfall caught us off guard. Again, it felt like we were in Oregon. The kids loved climbing along the mossy logs on the trail. This experience beautifully concluded our first day in Ireland. Kind of like going to bed after watching a really good movie or finishing a really good book. Speaking of bed, our AirBnB was a cozy Irish house in the city. Before you romanticize it too much, no, it was not a thatched roof with fairies floating around it.
Day 2: Ring of Kerry
Okay, ya’ll. We had SUCH excitement about the Ring of Kerry drive. It’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful drives in Ireland. Clearly, Taranis, the Celtic god of thunder, storms, and probably some other jazz, felt we deserved a more rugged initiation. The thick foggy and rain accompanied us for most of the day.
In the morning we did get some good weather to stop and walk along the Gap of Dunloe. There were some gorgeous views and beautiful native vegetation. It surprised us to see so many flowering plants during February in Ireland. We found some Gorse, which we first learned about at Dunwich Heath back in England. It’s a bright yellow flowering shrub. What makes it memorable is the smell of the flowers. They smell like coconut! We liked walking to each one along the path and smelling it juuuuuust to make sure it was truly Gorse.
Next up was Muckross Abbey. It dates back to the 1400s and has a Yew tree growing inside of it. When we check out buildings this old, it always amazes me to think about what it was like to live in these areas all the way back then. Was it cold, wet, damp, moldy, where did they get sunlight, etc? There were lots of twists and turns and it was surprisingly intricate on the inside compared to what it looked like on the outside. To be clear, “on the inside” means that we’re walking in ruins exposed to the elements. It’s not a immersive furnished like it was “back in the day” type of experience.
We then started our journey around the Ring of Kerry, the clouds moving in with the rain. We didn’t get to see much unless we got out of the car and walked to something. Sometimes it was a bit suspenseful and we’d chat about what we thought might be over the cliff (that we couldn’t see due to all the fog). While I think we were amazing for just going for it even in the weather, it did get a bit daunting as the the day wore on. Every time we stopped, we had to gear up to withstand the rain. After a while, everything felt just too wet to want to put back on again. Nevertheless, we kept rotating things on the air vents to do the best we could between stops and kept at it!
Windy Roads
We are learning with our travels, whether it’s a car, ferry, or bus, our kids are prone to motion sickness when windy roads or wavy conditions are present. At one point toward the end of the day as we drove through a pass Lil Fox told us Hedgehog was going to get sick. I turned around just in time to see a little dribble of vomit on her chin and then she immediately proceeded to projectile vomit all over the back seat of the car.
This was one of those helpless moments as a parent where you scramble to look for anything to catch the puke. I had nothing! The kicker is we had diligently put all of our coats and rain pants in the trunk if they weren’t being dried out after every stop just to protect them from the kids eating food etc. However, this one stretch we didn’t. Soooo her lunch, snacks and beverage made it all over a variety of clothes anyways in another form.
We pulled over and changed her outside (luckily, I had to foresight to bring a spare change of clothes that day and pack a bunch of handwipes). Then we did our best with our hands and few handwipes to “clean up the evidence.” Everyone sat in solemn silence for the rest of the drive that day.
Day 3: Dingle
Our third day still had poor visibility (and rain) so we spent the day exploring Dingle instead of doing our next scenic drive. We walked around the town, stopped at a playground, tried out some local ice cream, and went to the local grocery store like 45 times to get food and take toilet breaks. Seriously, I am surprised they didn’t think we were trying to create a new home in hallway somewhere.
That night we stayed at a little Irish pub and inn. They had the little open fire in a stove at the pub and the gentlemen told us to stop on by for a pint and some music later that night. He gave us our key from probably the 17th century and we walked to our rooms. We didn’t arrive until past bed times so turned down the offer of music and walked through the narrow, short, and slanted doors to our room and all went to bed. We never did figure out how to get the key to lock the door. So we just put a chair in front of the door and trusted in the Irish nature of this small town and went to bed. Surprisingly, we didn’t hear the music while sleeping! It overall was a cozy experience.
Day 4: Slea Head Drive
On our final full day, we finally had a little better weather and could do the Slea Head Drive. It was our favorite drive, but that obviously could be due to the weather and better visibility! Some of our favorite moments include stopping at a beach down in a cove. The kids could play in the sand and climb rocks while we walked barefoot into the cold water. From there you also had a viewpoint of some shots that from some Star War film. We really appreciated being able to get in and out of the car without needing to gear up every time! We even got a bit of sunshine too.
If it works out again we hope to fly back to Ireland for some other adventures. It was a prefect long weekend getaway with a little bit of everything!
