The gale force winds struck and we decided to forego the horizontal rain of the Ring of Kerry to instead make some time northward to meet up with Jill's cousin and husband who also happened to be visiting Ireland at the same time. They were staying at a ritzy castle called Dromoland, something like Disneyland for the golf set. The day after meeting up with them, we visited the Cliffs of Moher and then drove up to Connemara, prior to visiting the National Park there.

Ireland's green, and that's a direct result of all the rain that it gets, and we got to see both--the green and the rain. Driving around gets you places, but after awhile got majorly old, much more than doing the same thing in Italy. Part of that is there isn't really that much to see in Ireland except the scenery, whereas Italy has many more ruins and museums etc. If you like breathtaking scenery, it's got that in spades. if you want to experience some history, it's a bit harder to find.

We turned the car into the Sligo airport and then took a taxi to Horse Holiday Farm, where we met Tilman Anhold and were assigned the horses that we would have for the next week (Sunny for me, Kileen for Jill). We asked for "quiet" horses, as neither of us really needed an antsy or daredevil horse. Tilman also gave us saddlebags (we would leave our luggage at the farm, and live out of these two bags apiece for the next week) and traced our route on an ordinance map of the area. That night, we went out to dinner with some of the other guests of the farm, and that's when we learned a bit about the beach, which the horses considered "the race track." Jill's nervousness began to grow. Then she discovered that the guests, who didn't seem to have a problem with this, had only been riding since October, which helped calm some of those fears.