Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula: February, 2002

It may appear that I remember a great deal about vacations I've taken. I do, and Julie certainly supplements my memories, to say the least. I must confess, however, that taking good notes either during or immediately after a vacation, as I have on more recent trips, keeps memories more exact.



Photographs make memories more vivid, and seeing them often triggers forgotten feelings.

If you enjoy just getting behind the wheel and taking a leisurely drive through gorgeous countryside, it's hard to beat the Emerald Isle.

The rain and soil have combined to create lush landscapes of seemingly countless shades of green.

Along the way, you'll come across remarkably beautiful villages like Adare.


Farmlands cleared millennia ago and marked with stone fences blow me away every time. Maybe that makes me a hayseed, but Julie always seems duly impressed, too.

There are many great drives in Ireland, including the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry. We've had the photos in and out of order so many times, I honestly don't know which is which sometimes, but the drives were really wonderful.

Often, the photos don't do the scenery justice. What seemed to clearly be a seascape in the distance almost disappears when reduced to a 4X6 photo. Fortunately, on this blog you can click on most pictures and make them larger than the computer screen for a closer look.

I've also been pleasantly surprised to find that photos taken with disposable cameras at dusk and scanned years later can be cleaned up rather nicely, often showing details seemingly missed in the original photos.

Sometimes, I'm not even sure why we took the photo, and Julie says I keep too many.

I distinctly remember arriving at a B & B in Quin in the afternoon and seeing the view in the photo to the left, partly because we frequently arrived at our rooms after dark, when finding them becomes stressful. This one was located in a gorgeous horsey area. We checked in and then went into the town for dinner.

Before it got dark, we strolled around the ruins of Quin Abbey, built over time between 1402 and 1433 on the site of a 13th Century Norman castle.

Located on a river between Limerick and Galway made Quin Abbey a prime target for power struggles. Captured by Henry VIII and sold to the highest bidder, re-claimed by Irishman Donnchadh O'Brien, who was hung from the abbey steeple when English won it back, somehow coming into the hands of the MacNamaras who made it a college that was re-captured by Cromwell who executed the friars and desecrated the abbey, only to have the friars re-claim it a few later...the decades flew by in the old days.

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the Monk's Well in Quin. I don't remember exactly what I had, but I would have to guess it was fish and chips with a pint of Guinness, as that was my favorite dinner in Ireland, and I dined on that combo in several pubs.