the great derrynane power outage

I've been eating a lot. Normally I just have a mug of mocha for breakfast. But on this tour, breakfast is provided at the hotel, while lunch and dinner are "on your own." Knowing Mom and Dad, I expected we'd be eating gas station hot dogs for lunch and convenience store sandwiches for dinner. So I've been tucking in at breakfast. Then what actually happens is Dave recommends a restaurant for lunch, which we all go to, and books dinner for us at the hotel. We just pay on our own. It's good tour guide practice for sure, but also a lot of food.

Today I wised up and went light on breakfast. Piece of carrot cake, a bit of fruit, done. But I did drink two cups of coffee, which will be important later.

We spent the night at Kenmare and in the morning set off for a mountain drive along the Ring of Kerry. The hillsides are dotted with sheep, often spraypainted to signify ownership. The sheep we encountered on the road yesterday were tagged navy blue and sky blue. Today we stopped at a viewing point and the nearby sheep were tagged red, except one who was red and blue.

Sometime past 11, we arrived at Derrynane House, home of Daniel O'Connell, a statesman in the 1800s who advocated for Catholic rights. We made a beeline for the restrooms and found them locked. Apparently, a power outage hit Derrynane and the nearby town, so the facilities were closed. It was bad. I'd had two cups of coffee. K had THREE cups of tea. Dave couldn't reach any nearby place on his phone to see if they were open. Finally he drove us to a nearby beach with restrooms. We got there via a one-lane, two-way road winding through dense forest, so around any corner you might encounter a car hurtling toward you and have to stop or squeak past. The turnoff for the beach was gated by an archway too low for the bus (Dave warned us about this in advance) so he stopped on the side of the road and we walked the rest of the way, mindful of cars from both directions.

Well, it was fine. We all made it and returned to Derrynane refreshed. We couldn't enter the house, but naturally the grounds had gardens. I say "grounds" and "gardens," but they merged seamlessly with the surrounding woods, so it was more like a trail hike with bonus plants along the way. We thought we'd go see the South American garden, but we kept encountering branching paths with no signage and where's my fill-in map and directional UI? So we headed back. Skill issue. (But it was a fun walk.) Then we walked to the beach (yes, the bathroom beach), which was around a kilometer from the house, across a vast meadow dotted with yellow and purple and white wildflowers.

Afterwards we went to the town of Sneem for a late lunch. Dave didn't have a rec this time, and we got suckered by false advertising: we saw a sign for THE BEST FISH AND CHIPS and we were like yoooo. More like the mid fish and chips. Oh well.

Then we returned to Kenmare and had the rest of the day to chill and check out the town. The town center was around ten minutes' walk from our hotel. Every Irish town seems to feature bold candy-colored storefronts: mint, yellow, orange, teal, mauve... American color design feels so cowardly by comparison.

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Pictured: A rook in Kenmare; naked spraypainted sheep; unnamed ruin in the woods near Derrynane House