
after a good night's sleep, we had breakfast at the blue haven before checking out. for breakfast, both my husband and i ordered pancakes (him, banana - me, blueberry) to accompany the continental selections. i definitely missed the breakfast from glencairn, but we soon full and ready to head out again.

our first stop outside of kinsale was the drombeg stone circle, a mini irish stone henge if you will. as a former archaeology student, this was just the type of site i loved. again, as we arrived there was a small family leaving and we had the site to ourselves for a good 20 minutes before another couple arrived. there were some lovely views in the area out over the mountains and coast.
next we began our scenic drive out to mizen head, ireland's most south-westernly point. after a few close calls on the ever narrowing roads, we made it out to the signal station at mizen head and crossed the bridge out to the overlook. there are tremendous views of the coastline here. and thankfully you can't see through the bottom of the bridge, so i was able to cross without having my eyes closed. :)

after some worrying about the safety of a small child whose parents insisted on making him climb the barriers to get better photographs (some people...), we headed on to kenmare. we really only stopped in kenmare to see the stone circle there (which is like another mini-irish stone henge, and is perhaps overpriced at 2 euros per person) but we ended up spending a little time walking around the town and i would LOVE to return here on another trip. i seriously loved this little town. we did some shopping and enjoyed hearing all the cheers coming from the pubs as we passed-- it was the day of the big cork v. kerry game. i really can't say enough about how much i enjoyed the short amount of time we spent in kenmare.

once we were ready to leave kenmare, we continued on to tralee where we checked in to our hotel, ballyseede castle. i was initially concerned about our stay here as it has some mixed reviews on tripadvisor, but it exceeded all of my expectations. i will say that aside from ballyseede, tralee is not really a touristy town so don't expect to spend too much time downtown (we looked around briefly before deciding to head back to the castle for dinner). ballyseede is insanely beautiful. the common rooms are decorated finely and bedrooms are spacious and lovely. i loved our comfy room and even the knight at the end of the hallway. there was a small problem with the water supply on the evening we were here, but the staff handled it very professionally and even brought around bottled water for all of the rooms.

for dinner, we decided to eat in the castle bar. the food was great, we both ended up having the beef and guinness stew with some desserts as well. i will say however, that if you want to eat in the bar, be there early. it filled up very quickly and we saw several people who left as there was nowhere left to sit in the small area. after dinner, we headed back to the room to pretty much pass out after a busy day on the road! but what a fun day it was.