Wasting Away the Weekend

We were greeted on Friday, August 1, by glorious sunny weather. Although we arrived at roughly 1 PM, we didn't manage to leave Dublin airport until nearly 2:30, and had our first experience with the high speed national highway system of Ireland. Our first trip was roughly 100 km, but took us about 2 1/2 hours. We arrived in time to check into our B&B, explore the village, find some dinner, and go to bed. The next day promised excitement: we were on our way to the Mitchelstown International Music Festival. Stopping at the Mitchelstown caves to explore beautiful calcite-coated caverns, we went directly to Mitchelstown only to discover that the festival was cancelled this year due to a lack of support by local pubs. We visited a few minor attractions in the afternoon but were hoping for more success in the days to come. We did learn that nearby Millstreet was hosting a large festival the next day. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Millstreet during a monsoon, the festival was really a big concert with many bands we had never heard, mostly outside (in the rain), and cost about £25 (while this may only be $45 CDN ~ $35 US, it is nearly 75 DM, the currency we now live in). It was then that we decided to skip our planned stop-over in Macroom for the night, expecting that this inland village would have little to offer in the middle of a rainstorm.

Killarney was a great place to spend the rainy day as it had many shops for us to visit and in which to hunt for bargains. We were successful: I got a nice waxed-cotton jacket. After a couple of hours of shopping, we hit the road for Glengarrif, a small village at the tip of Bantry Bay in south-west Ireland. It was now Sunday night and we had spent over 50 hours in Ireland with little more than a waxed cotton jacket to show for it! In fact, the best part of these first two days was the purchase of a book entitled "The Best Irish Walks." While we had come to Ireland expecting to do lots of walking and hiking, it was this book which gave us the inspiration to search out the various hikes to come.