Today was another drizzly, cloudy day. In fact, at one point it was raining so hard, we put on our rain pants and left them on most of the day. We got a rather late start. At breakfast that morning, we got to talking with another couple about our trips. We had dropped off some laundry the day before, so we had to go pick that up, fold it all, and repack. The gal who did our laundry was very talkative and it took us awhile to just pick up the laundry. We did not have alot planned for today which is good because we did not head out until 11 a.m.! But that was okay, it felt good to just take it easy.
Minard Castle is the largest fortress on the Dingle peninsula. It is one of the locations used in the film "Ryans Daughter". The beach beside the castle is a storm beach and has large sandstone boulders. This was a very picturesque castle. Too bad the weather was so yucky!!
We headed out on a peninsula near Castlegregory and watched some huge waves! It was VERY windy out there. We got to watch some windsurfers for a bit. You can see how big the waves are in comparison to some boats.
Blennerville Windmill, Country Tralee, was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “ largest working windmill in" Ireland. During the Great Famine (1845-50) Blennerville was the main port of emigration from County Kerry. The windmill was built in 1800. We got to walk through it and see how it worked. It was quite interesting.
Tonight we are staying in an 15th century castle!! We got to Ballyseede Castle in Tralee early so had time to walk around the inside of the castle and the castle grounds taking photographs. It was a cool castle!
Our room was fabulous!!
After checking in and taking our luggage to our room, we walked around inside the castle. They had afternoon tea set out, so we stopped and enjoyed that for a few minutes.
I finally found my knight in shining armor!!
Here is one of the resident dogs. His name is Arthur and he is an Irish Wolfhound. He loves to lay in the middle of the front entry! He was adorable but man, he was HUGE!!
After touring the inside of the castle, we walked around the grounds.
A gentleman who checked us into the hotel, told us of a very nice 1.5km nature walk in the Ballyseede Woods. There are ruins of the house the original owners of the castle lived in before the castle was built. It was a nice walk but we got rained on several times. There were some very cool carved wooden benches.
Ballyseede Church
"Nice kitty...."
This was pretty funny: this was the door we had to go through to get to our room... hmmm....
Arthur enjoying the fire and trying to get some treats....
We had dinner in the castle dining room. It was a 5 course meal that took 2 hours to get through! It was very fancy and very expensive but when you stay in a castle, you have just got to experience it all! Dinner started with a tiny fruit smoothie which was compliments of the chef. It was so small, it was gone in 2-3 sips. My dinner: 1st course- prawns in garlic butter, 2nd course- sorbet, 3rd course- roast duck, 4th course- chocolate fondant with toffee sauce, and 5th course- coffee with a mint. It was all very good but I thought the duck was a bit "gamey". After dinner, we took a walk outside. When we came back inside, we met a group from the U.S. and got to talking about all we had seen and about how nice the people in Ireland are. Then it was to our room to crash for the night. Our room was so nice; we really enjoyed staying there!
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