Day 28: Dublin to Cork to Anascaul, Ireland

I put a picture on the blog of the bottom of my shoes. It was so hot the days we visited the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands that the roads melted and asphalt became stuck in the car tires and my shoes. Today we woke up, ate breakfast, packed up, and took a tram to Heuston Train Station. At Heuston Station we retrieved our tickets and boarded a train to Cork. Our friends didn’t have their ticket retrieval number, but were super lucky in reaching their mom at 4am Florida time and getting it before the train left. 

We had seats reserved, but our names were not appearing above the seats and we had a bit of a hard time getting a grumpy Irish man out our seat. He eventually left, but threatened to return to claim the seat if we had somehow gotten on the wrong car. Our names did eventually appear above our seats. The trains‘ WiFi wasn’t working, which drove the kids nuts. They took turns playing music from their phones and having the others guess the artist and song name. 

The train arrived just shortly after noon in Cork. Our rental car pickup location was close to the train station. From there we headed to Killarney National Park. We didn’t have too much time so we decided to do the Mining Trail by Ross Castle. It was a short, easy walk. It had some stunning views of the mountains. It also went past a copper mine, possibly the oldest in Europe. It was especially neat to see since we visited Falun Mine.

After the National Park we drove about an hour to Meelin Bed and Breakfast in Anascaul on the Dingle Peninsula. The views on the drive!! Amazing. We drove to Dingle about 20 minutes away and went shopping at a not too great Lidl (similar to Aldi, but this one wasn’t very good). It was so hard to find food for 3 days that needs no refrigeration. I am so used to having access to a mini fridge and microwave. There is a microwave in the dining area that we should be able to use. 

We went and walked around Dingle next. It was cute. We walked past several other and much better grocery stores. Oops. This area of Ireland has been beautiful so far.