Ireland 22-30 Oct Day 5

Again 8 am set off.  I was a long travel on the bus and the best part is sleeping on board.  I think about now I had made it to the front of the bus since we go on a rotational basis, every two days we jumped two seats.  This is to give everyone a chance to have the best view in the bus.

We skirted through the city of Limerick, headed to Adare, a village know for its prize-winning thatched cottages and we got to had lunch in one of them too.  Then off to Dingle Peninsula, where the 32 mile Slea Head drive painted a picturesque view of the Atlantic Ocean.

For the night and the next, we stayed at Killarney Court Hotel. It was great, I have the room to myself.

After hours of driving, we stopped by at a thatched cottage for lunch.  I just decided to have a vegetable soup since it was not too expensive.

After that it was a another long drive to Killarney and an optional tour to Muckross House and thereafter a drink at a nearby pub (I had tea instead). Herein are more pictures.

 

Muckross House is a mansion designed by the Scottish architect, William Burn, built in 1843 for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife, the watercolourist Mary Balfour Herbert.

With sixty-five rooms, it was built in the Tudor style. Extensive improvements were undertaken in the 1850s in preparation for the visit of Queen Victoria in 1861. It is said that these improvements for the Queen's visit were a contributory factor in the financial difficulties suffered by the Herbert family which resulted in the sale of the estate.

In 1899 it was bought by Arthur Guinness, 1st Baron Ardilaun who wanted to preserve the dramatic landscape.
In August 1911, not long before the First World War, Muckross House and its demesne were again sold to William Bowers Bourn, a wealthy Californian mining magnate. He and his wife passed it to their daughter Maud and her husband Arthur Rose Vincent as a wedding present. The couple lived there until Maud's death in 1929.

In 1932 her parents Mr and Mrs Bournes and their son-in-law Arthur Vincent decided to present Muckross House and its 11,000 acre estate to the Irish nation. Being called the ″Bourne-Vincent Memorial Park″, it thus became the first National Park in the Republic of Ireland and formed the basis of present-day Killarney National Park. In later years the park was substantially expanded by the acquisition of land from the former Earl of Kenmare's estate.