Since driving the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula took a little bit out of us, we decided to make our last day in County Kerry a little more leisurely and spontaneous. We went back to Kenmare and walked around the cute shops one last time for the first part of the morning. Zach was too cute once we got there, because he agonized over the perfect little stuffed lamb to get for Maddie, our niece. The funniest thing, though, is that the lamb he finally decided on was molting and had one of its ears sewed on backwards. I guess it had character, and Maddie ended up loving it.Next, we went to Torc Waterfall (this was Zach's pick for the day...and a good one at that), where we enjoyed the picturesque landscape and a good little hike.
Then, we walked a mile to a little place called Dinis Cottage. I'm not really sure what the significance of this place was, but it was cute.
The walk was beautiful, and we also spotted the Old Weir bridge. Again, not really sure of the significance...but very beautiful.
After this, we went to my pick for the day-The Kissane Sheep Farm. Apparently, there's very little money in wool anymore, so this family had the brilliant idea of opening up their farm for public tours at a very reasonable price. The toured included a sheep herding demonstration, a shearing, and I got to play with the sheep! This one clearly was not interested in the grass I was offering him.
On the way home, we stopped by the Strawberry Fields Pancake Cottage (cute name + pancakes= must stop). They had a front and back menu of, you guessed it, pancakes. Zach went for the savory (a huge pancake topped with tomatoes, cheddar, and basil), while I went for the sweet (a huge pancake with blackberries and powdered sugar). Very pleased with ourselves and our pancakes, we headed home to relax and do a little laundry.
The place where we were staying had free laundry in the reception area. So, I put our clothes in the wash and went to get cleaned up. However, I returned to find the reception area locked up, lights off, and everyone gone for the night. There was no number provided to reach any of the staff, and we were planning to leave first thing in the morning. So Zach, being the hero that he is, shimmied his way through a very long and very narrow open window into the laundry room. He told me to wait 30 minutes and then check on him. When I went to check on him, I found him sitting alone in the dark, antsy to get out of there. He threw all of the mostly dry clothes to me and began the process of working himself back out of the window. If you look closely, you can see the window to the far left of the darker colored portion, just before the lighter portion.
After all that drama, we put on some newly cleaned clothes and headed back into town, in search of a good pub with some good Irish music. Our ears led us to the Wander Inn Pub, where a group was playing some very lively music. We grabbed a couple of seats, ordered a couple of pints, and did a little people watching. I mostly enjoyed watching the bartender-a little lady who was about 6 inches shorter than I, and very stout. At one point, we began to notice this awful smell. Then, we saw said bartender grab an old man (who was clearly wasted) by his shirt tail and drag him out of the pub. We concluded that she must have thrown him out for pooping his pants. Not long after, the other bartender came by with some air freshener, and I found myself wondering, "Are we the only people who caught this?" Bizarre, a little sad, pretty funny, and an interesting way to end our time in County Kerry.
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