Killarney Travel Guide
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Killarney is 135km (84 miles) SW of Shannon, 309km (192 miles) SW of Dublin, 87km (54 miles) W of Cork, 111km (69 miles) SW of Limerick, and 193km (120 miles) SW of Galway
Killarney is the busiest beehive of tourism in Ireland -- the Grand Central Station of the southwest, with all the positive and negative connotations that this implies. The town becomes one giant traffic jam of battling tour buses every summer, and a mecca for pushy jaunting-car (horse-and-buggy) drivers. The locals are well practiced at dispensing a professional brand of Irish charm, and accommodations and restaurant prices are hiked up to capitalize on the hordes descending from the motor coaches. If that's not your scene, it's easy enough to resist Killarney's gravitational pull and instead explore the incredibly picturesque hinterlands that border the town on all sides. You might sneak into town at some point to sample the best of what this tourist megalopolis has to offer.
It's important to remember that the reason Killarney draws millions of visitors a year has nothing to do with the town. It's all about the valley in which the town is nestled, a landscape of lakes and mountains that's so truly spectacular that Brendan Behan once said, "even an ad man would be ashamed to eulogize it." And entering these wonders is ever so easy. Walk from the town car park toward the cathedral, and turn left into the national park. In a matter of minutes, you'll see the reason for all the fuss. During the summer, the evenings are long, the twilight is often indescribable, and you needn't share the lanes. Apart from deer and locals, the park is all yours until dark.
The park's three lakes are Killarney's main attraction. The first, the Lower Lake, is sometimes called "Lough Leane" or "Lough Lein," which means "the lake of learning." It's the largest, more than 6.5km (4 miles) long, and is dotted with 30 small islands. The second lake is aptly called the "Middle Lake" or "Muckross Lake," and the third simply "Upper Lake." Upper Lake, the smallest, is full of storybook islands covered with a variety of trees -- evergreens, cedars of Lebanon, juniper, holly, and mountain ash.
The lakes and the surrounding woodlands are part of the 65-sq.-km (25-sq.-mile) Killarney National Park. The ground is a soft carpet of moss and the air fragrant with wildflowers. Cars are banned from most of the ferny trails, so take a hike or hire a "jarvey," an old-fashioned horse-and-buggy that's a holdover from the days when the Victorians waxed poetic about Killarney and brought it to the attention of the world. Found within the park's limits are two major estates, Muckross and Knockreer, and the remains of major medieval abbeys and castles. A profusion of foliage, such as rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, camellias, hydrangeas, and tropical ferns, blossoms in season. At almost every turn, you'll see Killarney's own botanical wonder, the arbutus, or strawberry tree, plus eucalyptus, redwoods, and native oak.
The most noteworthy of Killarney's islands is Innisfallen, or "Fallen's Island," which seems to float peacefully in the Lower Lake. You can reach it by rowboat, available for rental at Ross Castle. St. Fallen founded a monastery here in the 7th century, and it flourished for 1,000 years. It's said that Brian Boru, the great Irish chieftain, and St. Brendan the Navigator were educated here. From 950 to 1320, the "Annals of Innisfallen," a chronicle of early Irish history, was written at the monastery; it's now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Traces of an 11th-century church and a 12th-century priory can still be seen today.
