Some Dance Pictures and the Ring of Kerry

First I want to share some of the professional pictures taken of Chris yesterday at All Ireland's. I'm really excited about these because we are not able to photograph him in competition...

So now that the dancing is all done, we are touring around the southwest region of Ireland. Today we spent the entire day exploring the Ring of Kerry, known as the Iveragh Peninsula. Thanks to some fantastic recommendations from the hotel, we had a great journey with some amazing views and we lucked out with the weather! It rained a bit but it was sunny when it needed to be. Pretty impressive for February in Ireland! We also saw an abundance of rainbows...

First along our journey was a stop at Kells Beach...

It was nice to see a beach, even in the middle of winter! We went along on our way to Portmagee and came across a beautiful old castle. We didn't find out much about it but it was pretty cool anyway...

We had a lovely lunch in this little fishing town of Portmagee (amazing fish and chips!) and ventured around Valentia Island with its very narrow and very high roads...

After the island, we returned to see the beautiful Kerry cliffs. They also had replicas of the beehive huts used by monks on the skellig islands located in the distance. In the second picture here (off in the distance) is Skellig Michael, famous in and of itself but more popular now because they filmed to two most recent Star Wars movies there. The locals are definitely milking that for all it's worth!

We drove a bit farther along some beautiful coastline and saw some big (maybe surf able?) waves...

When we were receiving advice this morning about this drive, the man at our hotel told us about a chocolate factory along the way that may be open. He compared the owner to Willie Wonka and said he kind of opens when he feels like it. Well, we found it along the way and enjoyed some chocolate sampling (amazing chocolate!). The only reason we didn't get the huge marshmallow-filled Easter eggs is because we can't fit it in all our baggage!

We drove a bit more and came to Straigue Fort which was an old ring fort back in, well, a long time ago. (We were getting tired at this point and didn't really read much about it!) But it was cool!

Finally, we took a scenic side road through Killarney National Park and stopped at a point called "Lady's View" which is absolutely gorgeous! I have a picture from this location from when I was here in 2000 and it's been hanging in our hallway for years. Now the picture will have a bit more meaning!

After 7 1/2 hours on the road, we were happy to be back in Killarney where we had some pretty yummy Chinese food (really!) right across the street from our hotel. It was a great day of driving through Ireland!