First night in Killarney

View from our window
at the Roadford House

When we left the Roadford House in Doolin we headed in the direction of Bunratty Castle.  We finally found it after a couple wrong turns and noted that it is called "Bunratty Castle and Folk Park", uh oh. We parked our car and went into the visitors center to see how much it would be just to tour the castle. Nope, you can't just tour the castle, you have to tour the Folk Park too, at least you have to pay to tour the Folk Park too. It was going to be €30 (about $41 USD) per adult and a little less for me with my senior discount. Chris and I said we would think about it and left. We could see a lot of castles for that amount of money.

We left there and went in search of the town of Adare which had been recommended we see. Turned out to be a very crowded touristy town but we did find a good place to have lunch.

We decided to head to Killarney via N21 toward Tralee then hook onto N22 to Killarney so we could see more of the countryside. We were treated to ruins and lots of beautiful scenery. It was kind of rainy so we didn't stop much.

We arrived in Killarney late in the afternoon. It was raining pretty hard and we discovered that our accommodation at the Arbutus was right in the center of town with no onsite parking. We put the car in a pay lot a couple blocks away and shlepped our luggage to the hotel. We were given our room key and told that we could park for free in a lot about a mile away.

Brićin dining room

We took the elevator up to our room and discovered it was not cleaned. I headed back to the front desk luggage in tow to tell them what had happened. Chris put his luggage in the room and found housekeeping. Then he came down and told me he was going to go park the car. I waited in the lobby with another couple who were also waiting for their room to be cleaned. We were given tea and biscuits while we waited.

After we got into our room and had unpacked what we needed, to clean up a little and change, we went back downstairs and asked the young woman at the front desk if she had any recommendations for dinner. She gave us several and we decided to try the one called Brićin. It is one of only 2 places in Ireland where you can still get real Boxty. Boxty is a traditional Irish potato pancake cooked on the griddle and filled with some kind of filling; both Chris and I chose chicken fillet and vegetables in a creamy tarragon scented sauce and it was delicious.

On the way back to our room we decided to have a Guinness before going up. We popped into our hotel pub and were greeted with silence and stares. The bartender took one look at us and left for the back somewhere. We waited for him to return but after more than 5 minutes we decided to go next door to Murphy's for our beer. Hmm, I wonder what we walked in on?