Kinsale V Kensale

Thursday, after breakfast at The Clarence's Tea Room (where they had free orange juice refills), we left in a cab to pick up our rental car. Brian is the D.D. We paid for the extra insurance, so we can leave it in a lake if we want to. At first, our GPS would only speak in German. Once that was fixed, we learned that she only knew one word: recalculating. We finally made it out of Dublin. Some roads were decent and some were all curves and overhanging trees and bushes. Brian is doing well driving on the other side of the road, but it stresses him out. When we got into Kinsale, there was a huge art festival going on, and there was no parking. It didn't help that our hotel didnt have an official address other than Main Street. Finally we parked and asked how to get to our hotel at the visitor's centre. The hotel cost €90, but it wasn't very nice. We couldn't adjust the heat and the live music and extremely drunk and loud people kept us up a lot of the night. When we woke up early this morning, I couldn't even shower because there wasn't any hot water. We blew out of there and hiked up the hill for the car park. Drivers tend to park anywhere where there isn't water, and it makes it difficult to get down any street. The drive to Baltimore Harbour, for our whale watching tour, was good, but we had more scary roads to navigate. We have no idea who can even drive 100km per hour. I think we averaged about 45. We went out with Nic, a zoologist, hunting for whales. Minksie whales are fairly small, and we had sightings of them (usually I missed them). We also saw bottlenosed dolphins and seals. It was chilly out on the water, but Brian and I had on our waterproof gear. The drive to Kensale was decent. We stumbled on our hotel and found a decent parking spot. After having pizza for lunch, I had pasta at a bar across from our hotel. Tomorrow we are going to do a little hiking in Killarney National Park, and then we head up to Galway City, which is also having an Arts Festival, like the other two towns. There is a band downstairs at the restaurant, but they keep playing American music. I want to hear Irish music, just not when I'm trying to go to bed. I have learned zero Celtic words, so this entry will just end.