Day 7: Train Ride and New Culture

Today was a big travel day for us.  This is because we left for Killarney in the morning. Our day started at 6:00 so that we had enough time to finish any last minute packing and clean our apartments and be on a bus at 7:00. The bus then took us to the train station for a ride that left at 8:30.  This gave us plenty of time to eat breakfast at SuperMacs. After breakfast, we boarded our train, and we were on our way to Killarney. This train ride was definitely a highlight of our day,  because of all the beautiful scenery, which included all the trees and all the mountains around us. When we arrived in Killarney 3 hours later it was time for lunch but we first needed to stop by our hotel, The Heights Hotel Killarney. Lucky for us the hotel has a restaurant inside which was pretty great. After we finished our meal, we went out to shop and explore the local village/shopping center. This shopping center is much different than the one in Dublin. One main factor is the number of cars on the road. What this does is make things easier for walking and to be much more calm while still so much is going on around you. Another effect is how the shopping center is set up. What I mean when saying this is, while in Dublin you can't see anything except for all the shops and restaurants because everything is so densely packed there. Now for the center in Killarney, there were still many shops and restaurants but all the stores seemed to be spread out farther apart, creating more views from street height to see nearby mountains and other landmarks and giving the center a more open feel.  Another thing I noticed is the people here seemed to be more friendly. This could have been because of the fact that we were out at night and on a weekend. Personally I believe the Killarney center is much nicer solely because the set up of the buildings and the population isn't as big as Dublin's making less car and foot traffic. What comes with being in a less crowded area is more of a sense of security making our day that much better.