Dingle October 9-11

Hello readers, sorry to have left you hanging, but had no Internet at the B&B.

We left Dublin for Dingle on the morning of October 9, taking a tram to the train, to another train, to a bus, and ending with a walk up a country road. While it may not be the easiest place in Ireland to get to, it was worth every minute. As you will see in the photos, the scenery was beautiful the entire route- a sea of green in as many shades as there are blues in the ocean. Passing cows and sheep and wildflowers with "mountains" in the background (they just aren't very tall). Eventually on the bus adding the ocean to the set, and it could not have been more beautiful. I don't think we will have better scenery for the rest of the trip, though the Swiss alps and Cinque Terre Italy may compete.

At the bus station in Tra Lee we met Thomas, a native of Norway living in Geneva for the past 30 years, with a strong French accent. Dingle is quite a small town, so as you will see in the rest of the post, we ran into him several times!

The B&B we stayed at, O'Shea's, was up a small road called Conner's Pass- no sidewalks, and posted speed limit of 80 km/hr (so the few cars the went by did so very rapidly!). A bit scary, but we got to pet a beautiful friendly horse who came right up to the gate as we went by. The sheep and goats didn't even notice us. As you can see in the photos, our window looked out onto fields, with the little Dingle town in the background, mountains to the sides, and the ocean in the distance. Beautiful and quiet, perfect for a couple days away to relax. Dingle itself is very quiet as well- apparently this is very much the off-season, and much was closed. The town is painted in pastels, and echoes small American beach towns.

In the evening we went to a pub to take in traditional Irish music (flute and guitar and fiddle/violin), where we again ran into Thomas. We shared stories over Guinness (which wasn't quite as good as it was at the factory in Dublin), and as they say here in Gaelic, the "Craick" (pronounced crack, meaning hearty conversation) was entertaining. (And don't worry, we took a cab home up the road at night- a $4 Euro 5 minute journey well worth it).


The next day, October 10, we found that so much of the town is shut down that no tours were running (it was a Sunday) except for the tour into the harbour to see the local dolphin 'Fungie'! Finding the $18 euro per person cost to go see a dolphin not smart enough to live in warm water, we passed on the tour. We were also unable to rent bicycles as the shops closed on the weekend in off season, so we ended up calling a taxi to take us to Slea Head. As we were waiting on the taxi, Thomas wandered up and was excited to come along. The timing was perfect and it was nice to have another companion for conversation as well as splitting the $36 Euro ride. The taxi driver gave us an excellent overview of the area and its history before dropping us off. As it turned out, we were glad to not have been able to rent the bicycles- getting out of town would have been somewhat trecherous.

We were dropped off at the 'Clochain' or Beehive Forts, which were built around 2000 BC- that's around 4000 years ago! Apparently they were resettled around 500 BC, which were the current buildings. These had the appearance of an igloo made of rock. They were much bigger than we had expected, and had multiple rooms connecting to each other.

We then continued to walk along the coast, where we had stunning views of Slea Head, the westernmost point of Europe (they say "The next parish is Boston"), where the waves constantly crashed into jagged black rock cliffs. I tried to narrow down my photos of this, but still ended up posting quite a few in an attempt to capture the power of the area. We followed the road for a couple hours to where there was a small sandy beach- as you can see, we went ankle deep in the freezing water- where a couple brave/stupid surfers wore wetsuits, seemingly not noticing the cold. The cab then came to pick us back up, and we headed back to Dingle. From the beach we had beautiful views of the Great Blasket Islands, uninhabited since 1950s. These are now an ecological preserve that boats run tours around during the summer.

A few more random thoughts, as I am currently in an Internet cafe and trying to keep the minutes down:
-Matt travels like Puddy (from Seinfeld), he needs his sit and stare time. Watching this as I glance up from my book (finished the new Jack Reacher- excellent) is pretty entertaining.
-The first night in Dingle we went to a small Chinese place run by a very nice man from Hong Kong- what I had was very good (it was beef and mushrooms and came out in a sizzling bowl not too different from the way fajitas are served in the US), but Matt ordered the General Tso's chicken- an American Chinese dish that was not very good here... the next night he ordered chicken nuggets and french fries.... and before we left Dublin he had chicken wings... I must work on convincing him to get outside the American fried chicken box :)
-We finally got the classic English/Irish breakfast at our B&B, and it was fantastic- egg over medium, "bacon" (more like pan fried thick ham), sausages, pan grilled tomatoes, fresh fruit, cereal, coffee, juice, toast, and cheeses. One does not need a lunch after a breakfast like this.
-After our walking tour we popped into the grocery store to get lunch- ended up at the deli counter. Have never ordered a roasted ham hock before. Thought it was mostly bone and we ordered 2 (they were around $1 each so I figured that to be that cheap there must not be much meat on them). Ummm....yeah. Ham hocks are big and very meaty as it turned out. Ended up having to throw basically a full one away.
-The pubs here keep the lights on very bright. This was a strange contrast to the typical American pub where you can only read the menu by your cell phone light.
-We washed some socks in the sink, thinking they would be dry by the next morning. Wrong. It is very humid here...and now we are travelling back to Dublin with a sack of wet socks... Ooops!
-In my "tourist things I like to look at calculus from my last post, I realized there is something I like even more than architecture- nature. The cliffs going into the sea with black rocks with rolling green mountains covered in sheep could keep me entertained all day long.
-Here the mountain grazing is called "commonage" which means anyone can use the land for their sheep. In order to keep track of which sheep is yours easily (without checking their barcode, which they also have), the farmers paint them funny bright neon colors on their backs. This is quite entertaining to see a field of sheep with neon pink wool.
-Guinness has branded every product with their logo, but we thought of a new one for them since they seem to brand everything already- a home pregnancy test which, if negative, could read "Negative, enjoy a Guinness!" If positive, "9 months to next Guinness!" I think people would buy this!
-Why people would pay $18 Euro each to go see Fungie the dolphin is beyond my comprehension...
-The signs here are in Gaelic and English, and say things like Ionad Chnoc Bhreanainn (The Great Blasket Centre). Glad the English is present...
-Irish accents here are much thicker and harder to understand than in Dublin, but most are used to dealing with tourists and can get their point across eventually.
-Dingle is such a small town that there are no street addresses, only street names. This makes it a little challenging to find things when you have first arrived in town...
-As we went to the westernmost point of Europe yesterday, we must be headed East now- touch down in Brussels tomorrow evening. Very much looking forward to not having any more planes to catch, and can travel at whatever intervals we please :) Next post will probably be from there!