Burning Down The Barn!

We are in Limerick.

Yesterday we drove the Ring of Kerry, which is a scenic drive from Killarney out along Dingle Bay and back around. The views were... amazing, and we had amazingly good weather the whole time. Really, the weather the whole trip has been quite awesome -- it's rained quite a bit, but with few exceptions it has been really nice when we wanted to be outdoors. We stopped for lunch at a place Danny knew that had an amazing view of the sea; and later we stopped for ice cream in a village with the unlikely name of Sneem. We also went through a frighteningly small, narrow tunnel (we applauded Danny the driver for that one).

On the way back to Killarney on our drive we stopped at Muckross House, a manor house built in the mid-1800s. It has been restored quite nicely and the house and grounds are just gorgeous. Our tour guide had the most beautiful Irish accent, it was to die for ;-).

After Muckross House we returned to the hotel and rested and had dinner on our own, then gathered at 9 to share some early farewells since our schedules wouldn't permit proper goodbyes tonight or tomorrow. On the tour we've all had a "tour buddy" who we were responsible for making sure was present when the bus leaves. We were all tasked with writing a limerick for our tour buddies, and we shared them. I'm hoping we will all post them at some point. I'll just say that some were sweet, some were just darn funny and all were appreciated and a lot of fun. What a group! We also shared some limericks for Danny, our amazing driver and Gunnar our guide. Danny has been SO much fun on this trip -- skillful, knowledgeable and really funny. It's been awesome. After the gathering we commandeered the snooker room and sang some songs and shared some jokes. Eliot played some tunes on his pipes, and he accompanied Kate on a beyoooooootiful song she sang. Ron then led us in some other songs with his guitar and then I called it a night.

This morning we left at 9 (Danny played Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" (I think that's what it's called) in honor of July 4th) and drove to Adare, a small village not too far from Limerick. We sang a 15-20 minute concert in the park opposite the visitor center and had a reasonably good audience, but it was outside and it was hard for us to hear ourselves. We did a pretty good job though!

After we left Adare we drove to Bunratty Castle and had time for lunch (I paid €17.50 (about $25!) for some really good roast beef with mashed AND new potatoes (see Biff's post below), carrots and cabbage, a Coke and some lovely cake. Then we had a castle tour -- pretty cool. The castle was built in 1425 and except for replacing the roof they didn't have to do too much restoration. After the tour we grabbed our music and since it had started to rain, we went to sing in a barn next to the pub we were originally told we would sing at. We sang for about 20 minutes or so and actually had a surprisingly large and enthusiastic audience (about 50, I was told) -- I'm not sure where they came from but I think Gunnar rounded them up. It actually was one of the better concerts on the tour -- as Kristi said, "Who'd a thunk it!?"

After the concert we got on the bus and headed for the hotel, taking a moment to mark America's birthday by singing "America the Beautiful" by special request from Kate :-). It was heartfelt and really touched me. The hotel is really nice -- the nicest rooms we have had on the trip so far, and free Internet! Yay :-) Tonight most of us are going back to Bunratty Castle for our banquet. It should be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow is the Burren region and the Cliffs of Moher, then a joint concert with the Voices of Limerick. Sunday the group travelers head home. I'm about ready to sleep in my own bed... it will be nice to be back in the USA.