First Full Day In Ireland!

Megan and I got up early at 6:30 and went running in a beautiful park that is their National Forest.  It is one of the prettiest places that I have ever run!  We saw cows grazing and lots of red deer all over the park!  It was a good run!  We went 4 miles and it was in the 50's-- heaven for running!  We went straight to breakfast and the food, again, was really yummy!  Brooke and Katelyn met up with us.  (McKenzie came on her own earlier.)  After, Bill and I went to our mtg., which was super SHORT-- the BEST kind of mtg.!  It gave me time to take a quick nap in the room before our tour this afternoon.  (Bill had mtgs. all morning.)  This was an included group tour for Edward Jones.  We left the hotel at 1:30 and drove out to the countryside.  Everything here could be on a postcard!  We headed for the Muckross Estate, an 18th Century mansion.  We took a guided 1 hour tour through the many rooms of this beautiful house where Queen Victoria stayed in August 1861.  This house showed how the wealthy Irish lived over 200 years ago.  It was pretty interesting...it also rained really hard as we were walking from the bus to the entrance of the tour-- good thing we brought umbrellas!  The tour was really interesting.  Then we walked around for a bit, but didn't have time to see everything I would've liked to!  Then we took a ride in a "jaunting cart" or what we would call a horse drawn carriage.  Our driver was such a cute, old man!  He was a lot of fun and kept cracking jokes-- very Irish and the girls enjoyed his humor too!  He took us through where Megan and I ran this morning!  Then, we headed back to the hotel where he dropped us off.  He recommended "Cronins" for dinner, and since we hadn't eaten lunch, we were really hungry, so we walked straight there from the hotel.  It tasted really good and we went to "Murphy's" afterward for ice cream cones.  They say it's the best ice cream in Killarney, but I didn't think it was that great.  Good, but not the best I've ever had!  We poked around the cute shops and then came back.  Bill, Meg, Brooke and Katelyn went to the pool and enjoyed the Jacuzzi.  I went but didn't get in.  We are all very tired and a bit jet lagged still...  (BTW, the Gaelic phrase means, "a hundred thousand welcomes", and we heard this said everywhere.  The Irish are very friendly and welcoming!  They learn Gaelic in school and all speak it along with English.)