The Burren & Ennis to Killarney

Our fifth day didn't start out so well for me, I didn't feel good. We still made a lot of plans for that day since we didn't have much time in the Ennis region.

We had been pretty impressed by "the Burren" on our drive yesterday, so we decided to pay a visit to the Burren National Park. We came by a (closed) visitor center, so we just drove on with the vague information we had about the area. The road was really narrow, but we didn't come across many people out there. We came by a parking lot that seemed to be the starting point for different hiking paths, but wanted to get deeper into the rocky landscape.

After a while we had pretty much no idea where we were, as our map wasn't detailed enough to show the tiny road we were on. We didn't realize that we had actually driven out of the National Park already until we came into the next little town. There we found a little Tourist Information that had a map of the different hiking paths in the area.

We decided to try one close to the Black Head, where we'd been the day before. Sadly the path didn't lead up into the rugged rocky parts of the Burren, but rather followed a road through the valleys.

Since we had to drive down to Killarney that night, and I wasn't feeling good we decided to leave it at that and continue our little road trip.

We stopped again at Fanore Beach, which was absolutely stunning because the Limestone Formations of the Burren reached right down to the beach. Also it was a beautiful beach =D

We came by yet another really pretty beach just a bit later. It still astonishes me how many beaches there are in Ireland, and especially how absolutely beautiful they are. Ireland somehow never struck me as a country known for it beaches, but I guess it should be. Well. If the water was actually warm enough to swim in it. But there are many people surfing and things like that, because if you're wearing a wet suit.

Well anyways, have a picture of the beach:

On our way to Killarney we were pretty late and decided to take the Shannon Ferry to skip a part of the road. The trip across took approximately 20 minutes and gave us quite a few nice views, especially of a little lighthouse. Somehow we didn't manage to take a good picture of it though.

In the evening we finally arrived in Killarney, where we'll spend the next six days, exploring the Ring of Kerry and the Killarney National Park and whatever else we can think of.