Today was another travel day, by train to Killarney. We we up early and took a taxi to Heuston train station.  There we validated our Eurail pass and caught the train out to Killarney, with one quick train change along the way.  The Irish countryside was green and beautiful, and the small stone train stations we passed through were charming.

At Killarney we called the proprietor of the bed and breakfast where we were staying, and she came out to pick us up.  She turned out to be a bright red headed woman who looked and spoke just like you would expect an Irish person to look and speak.  She took us to a Tesco store to buy some food and then took us out to her house.  This turned out to be a sort of farmhouse a few miles outside of town. We ate in the kitchen and the girls went out to play on a trampoline with the proprietor’s daughter, an eleven-year-old girl named Georgeen.

Meanwhile, we went upstairs to our room to relax and plan our next few days. This turned into a very frustrating evening, as we slowly discovered that the train and ferry schedules were such that we couldn’t get out of Ireland for at least two days later than we planned. We thought about leaving right away to avoid getting trapped, but decided that would be silly, and instead planned to get out by going back through England.

I’m still struggling with jet lag, and could not sleep for half the night.