Ireland, Day One: Muckross Pet Farm, Ross castle, Torc Waterfall

We started out our first day in Ireland with some activities close to home.  The town of Killarney in the County of Kerry is the absolute perfect place for homebase!  Before I started researching, I assumed that we'd fly into Dublin (simply because that was the main city that I'd heard of, but all of the gorgeous scenery is on the West side).  We also could have stayed in a beach front rental, but all of them were pretty far to have to drive home to each day.  We knew we'd be in the car a lot and with three kids in tow, we wanted to cut every corner we could!!!  Also, we found a nice balance between kid things and boring adult things to make everyone happy.  Poor Luke was the best trooper and took all of his naps that week in the car!!!!!!

 

Our first stop was to the Muckross Pet Farm...the rain came and went that day, but we were told that you just have to go with it or you'd never see anything!  You'll notice in the pictures over the week that we go back and forth from heavy coats, hats, gloves, to short sleeves!  And I'm soooooooo glad that I thought to grab the girls' rainboots at the last minute!  Even though we had some awesome sunny days, it was still pretty wet everywhere! 

 

The girls played at the park at Muckross Farms while we were waiting on Luke to wake up from his car-nap!

 We were given a bag of animal feed as we started wandering the farms...

 A pony ride was including in the admission!

It was recommended by the owner to start at the chicken coop and make our way around and finish at the puppies!!!  We only told the girls that there was a surprise waiting at the end!!!!  We literally had to drag them away!!!  They would have stayed all afternoon and of course, this was their favorite part about Ireland...too funny!!!  They were extra adorable though!!!  :) 

Right around the corner was the Ross Castle.  It was very fun to explore the grounds, but we didn't pay the admission to look around inside for the tour...it was 45 minutes long and we didn't want to torture ourselves!  ;) 

And then also right around the corner were the Torc Waterfalls!  An awesome, kid-friendly hike...it reminded us a lot of the Triberg Waterfalls in Bavaria, Germany.