hike | Travels, Adventures, and Leisure

First part of the day was going around the Ring of Kerry (recommended stop we followed were mainly from chatGPT). We started at our hotel in Killarney, The Lake Hotel, and drove 15 minutes south to our first stop, Torc Waterfall. After parking we followed the yellow trail to get to the waterfall. It was a moderate hike in terms of elevation, but definitely recommend doing it. Waterfall was also a good view. The area in general is a good area for hiking trails (and is part of the Killarney National Park).

We then headed to the next recommend stop, Ladies View. It was a quick stop of a high scenic view of the lakes. Worth the stop.

The third stop was Moll’s Gap. Definitely worth skipping (nothing really to see).

Fourth stop was at a town called Sneem. Main attractions are the scultpure park and the bridge. I would say it’s optional to stop by, but would recommend getting lunch there if you hadn’t eaten yet.

Next stop was Kerry Cliffs (which itself is slightly off the Ring of Kerry. It’s in the Skellig Ring). Definitely recommend visiting it for the views.

Next we visited one other site that was off the Ring of Kerry, Valencia Island, to view the Tetrapod footprints (the animals were supposedly one of the first animals to set foot on land on earth, and they are 1 meter long)). Not sure if it was worth the detour, since not sure if the footprints were real.

Last stop was Roseebeigh beach. Not worth the stop (just a plain beach).

In summary, the must sees are the Torc Waterfall, Kerry Cliffs, and Ladies view. The skippable ones are Moll’s Gap and Rossbeigh beach. If there is a next time might spend 20 minutes hanging out in Glenbeigh along the way. And might try and do the west most European islands, Skellig Michael. Also, fyi, driving the ring is pretty intense because half the time the roads do not fit two cars (you have to give way to people coming on the opposite side).

Afterwards, we headed for a 2 hour drive to our hotel in Cork, the Clayton Cork Hotel, located in the center of the city.

Soon after arriving we had a reservation at a seafood restaurant a block away called Goldie. Details here:

Goldie

In terms of exploring the city for nightlife, you basically have Oliver Plunkett St happening with lots of bars and pubs. St Patrick St is filled with shops, and has the classic Burger King open late. For a touristy Irish dive bar with folk music, we churches out Sin E (recommended by a waitress). It is small, but there was Irish music. For electronic music, Resident Advisor said an event with Katie Butler (no Spotify and many sound cloud accounts with the same name) was happening at Dali. Music was all over the electronic spectrum, but ended up staying there for 1 hour. Crowd was my scene 😉

FYI the above is mainly around the St Patrick neighborhood. There is also the Victorian Quarter as well as others that would be good to visit next time.

Started off the day eating a free breakfast at our hotel (Aberlour hotel), which seems like a traditional Scottish breakfast (including black pudding, which is basically blood sausage paddy).

After, we headed 20 minutes to Glenlivet estate / Distillery. A few things I learned:

-it has a really long drive way up a hill so that the taxman (from the olden days) wouldn’t find their whisky they were trying to sell

-it’s 200 years since they got their license to sell whisky

-it’s fruity flavors are mainly from the copper stills (not the well water)

-in the stills it is 4 hours in the washbacks and 5 hours in the copper ones (where it then is at the 62% alcohol level they want it at)

-they use both american casks and European casks. European casks are supposed to be sweeter notes while the american smoother notes

-the 12 and 16 single malt years are double casks, where they are from two different barrels (american and the. European). The 14 is only from american (but could still be double cask

-single malt refers to the fact the whisky comes from one distillery

-single cask means the bottles whisky it has only been from one barrel. Double cask means the bottle has whisky from two different barrels. A Finish means it was transferred from cask to another (say from and American one to a European one)

-Glenlivet was Seagram before

After Glenlivet, we headed west towards Inverness to Clansman Hotel to catch our boat ride around Loch Ness (by jacobite boats). The boat ride was 2 hours in total and included a stop to Urquhart castle (the highlands largest castle). Some details about it:

-built in the 500s, and was around until the 1500s

-eventually people broke through it (or stormed it) and also pillages things from it like it’s rooftops and art

In terms of the Loch Ness monster, apparently some doctor in the early 1900s took a picture of Nessi, but they discover in the 1990s it was a fake picture (he used a combination of picture taking trickery). However people do claim still that they have seen it for real.

After we headed to a trail close by called the South Loch Ness trail. Only hiked 2 km of it because it was too muddy from the rain early (Scotland weather has a bit of on and off showers). The hike did have a good view of the highlands.

After, we headed to Inverness to walk around along the Ness Walk. Inverness on Sundays have most of their shops closed, but most of their eateries are open (and the really good ones are full). It took us our 3rd choice restaurant selection (but they seated us an hour later than we wanted). We did stop McDonalds and Tesco (a grocery store). Details can be found here for the restaurant we ate at, Encore Une Fois:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2024/07/07/encore-une-fois/

We then headed back to our hotel in Aberlour.