Ring of Kerry-Saturday

I've got quite the post for you today so get comfy!

After an early rise and a delicious Irish breakfast we loaded up the bus.  We left the main Ring of Kerry route and drove the Skellig Ring, a loop that most tourists don't drive.  We first made our way to Valentia Island, population 500.  In the picture below you can faintly see two islands on the horizon on the right.  These are the Skellig Rocks.  The rock on the right was found by Irish Christian monks in the 7th century.  These monks built a monastery and lived on this rock for hundreds of years before being attacked by the Vikings. In the summer months you can take boat trips out to see the Skelligs.  The monastery on this rock is the best preserved monastery in the world!  There is a Skellig Museum on the island that we visited to watch a video and walk around an exhibit.

The picture above is also the location where the transatlantic cable was brought to Ireland.  The transatlantic cable was the first connection between Europe and the United States.

Next the group made our way to a farm on Valentia Island.  This farm was owned by the speaker that we listened to on Friday night.  These smelly calfs are just 3 days old!

To make more money for his family, this farmer also made path to the top of a mountain on his land to become a tourist attraction.  It was quite a difficult hike and VERY windy but it was the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen and it was beyond worth it.  We had absolutely beautiful weather for this whole trip.  Marion has been doing these weekends for 6 years now and she has never seen weather like the weather we had.  We got very lucky and were able to see for miles (very rare)!

So windy!

We then went to the other side of the island to visit the Velentia Slate Quarry.  Velentia is known for it's slate.  It is very spendy and is used to shingle some of the expensive houses around southern Kerry.  We learned that Venentia slate was used to roof Parliament in London.

Next we got back on the bus and drove through Ballinskelligs, Marion's hometown.  When we were driving through she was pointing to all of her relatives houses, it was so funny! She was like "Oh and here is my uncle's house on the left, there's the house that I grew up in on the right, right next to that is my brother's house, oh look he's in the window waving...everybody wave!!".

We got off the bus Ballinskelligs beach.  This is McCarthy's Castle below.  Marion told us that we couldn't walk out there because we got there too late and the tide was already in.

We then got back on the Ring of Kerry route and returned to our hotel in Cahersiveen.  After lunch we went to an old defense tower just down the road.  The walls were about 20 feet thick.  It had all sorts of staircases and a flat grass top!  

Here's Meghan and I perched on top of the tower enjoying the view:

Here are just some of the millions of sheep that I saw this weekend.  You can't see  it in this picture but all sheep in Ireland have some sort of spray-painted marking in their wool.  Farmers do this on all of their sheep so that they don't get their sheep mixed up with their neighbor's sheep.

We then made our way back to the town of Cahersiveen.  We stopped in the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church.  This was the first Catholic church in the world to not be named after a saint.  Some members of the church had to visit the Pope and request special permission to name the church after Daniel O'Connell.  

Your history lesson for the day: Daniel O'Connell is one of the most important figures in Irish history.  He played a big role in getting Ireland's independence from England.  He worked with American figures Frederick Douglas and Abe Lincoln to help abolish slavery.  He was also a big supporter of women's rights.  Obama considers Daniel O'Connell as one of his biggest heros.

After dinner we listened to a local Gaelic football player talk to us about the history of the game and how it's played.  Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland.  He brought a few of his sons that taught us a few moves of the game.  They brought balls and we had the opportunity to play with them!  I'll make a post some other time about the game.  

As you can imagine we were quite tired at this point in the night but that's not all!! We then did a table quiz with all of the other students in the hotel pub.  Table quizzes are very popular in pubs around Ireland.  I have never gone to one because I never knew what they were.  I do now and it was fun!  We got into a group of 5 and answered 8 rounds of 10 random trivia questions.  There were questions about geography, history, celebrities, art, music, movies, etc.  Meghan and I were on a team with two Italian girls and a German girl.  It was very interesting with our language barrier and listening to how they said certain words in their language.  It also became quite handy when we had to answer questions about European history and geography!

You can only imagine how great we slept that night...