Killarney

I know the blog has been quiet for the last couple of weeks but hang on to your seats--it's about to get real! Since my last post about the ceili, life has been pretty normal: school, practices, play dates, snow. Really not much to take pictures of. But today I am happy to say that we are back in Ireland! This time we are in Killarney, a beautiful town located in the southwest part of the country and we are here for Christopher to compete in All Irelands! This is essentially the Irish Nationals but international dancers are allowed to compete as well if recommended by their teacher, so here we are. We flew out of JFK today? yesterday? Who knows because we are all slightly tired an delirious. Anyway, there were a bunch of dancers on our flight and we got in this morning around 5:30AM Ireland time.

We had a stellar breakfast at the airport (I'm not being sarcastic--it was a full Irish, although vegetarian, breakfast), we set off for the 2 hour drive down to Killarney. It's so beautiful driving through the country here and after driving on the left side last summer, I was no longer intimidated and felt right at home on the left side. We made it down to our hotel exhausted but in one piece and miracle of miracles, our room was ready. Even better, they upgraded us to a suite where I would like to live for the rest of my life. Kidding! But it's pretty sweet...

All I have to say is, this kid is so spoiled! I mean...

After brief naps and showers for all, we went off to get lunch and explore Killarney. There was a light mist and some crazy wind (true Ireland weather) but we enjoyed the town. The boys got pizza and I started on my seafood chowder/brown bread streak. Delicious!

One of the things Killarney is known for is Killarney National Park, which we will explore more after Christopher's competition. Our hotel is practically across the street from it though so we went to this restored home and took a self-guided tour and learned more about the park. We also took a windy tour of the gardens!

Finally, we came back to the hotel for some chill time. And, of course, the boys found their favorite show...

They have a lovely sitting room downstairs with a fireplace, so that is our next stop on the tour! I see an hot Irish coffee in my future...