Continued from Dingle Day 1.
Woke up to a beautiful day here in Dingle this morning. We slept in and skipped breakfast.
The plan is to go into town, walk around, and then spend the afternoon driving around the Dingle peninsula.
Change of plans. It’s Sunday morning and most of the shops aren’t open yet in the morning. We’ll go do the drive around the coast first then come back and visit the town in the afternoon.
The Dingle distillery, closed today since it’s Sunday.
Another beautiful secluded beach.
More interesting patterns in the sand by the waves.
RL instantly becomes a little kid when she gets on a beach and starts looking for shells and things.
Some sort of plant? It looks kind of like a skate egg though.
Look, a donkey!!! Reminds me of my dog so much!!!
The sun angle shone straight into the camera lens all morning, despite that, the amazingly clear skies still gave us excellent photos for the day.
These donkeys really love to be pet by people.
Cool all stone restaurant building…I bet they’ve got another structure under the stone holding it up though.
Made another stop, this time to see some beehive huts built centuries ago.
RL told me that I couldn’t climb on the fort earlier, but they didn’t have this sign over there.
How did they make these without the roof collapsing?
Of course, they are doing some renovation work over here.
How did all those stones stay together? It is merely the forces of each one trying to collapse upon the other ones that’s holding the dome up?
Ireland, you are so beautiful.
That’s a first for Ireland. Just drove through a stream that ran across the road.
Hungry, it’s noon and time for lunch. Got a sandwich at a grocery store in Dingle before making the drive out here. this will be a beautiful spot to eat it.
Or not…as soon as I set my food down, a couple of seagulls started crowding really close to me. Then one started gawking at me loudly and aggressively, obviously wanting me to feed it…errr…maybe I’ll take the food inside the car.
The super aggressive seagulls of Dingle watched angry from outside while I ate my sandwich inside the car.
The Blasket islands, the most Western tip of Ireland.
I ate the second half of my sandwich here, while enjoying this view. No aggressive seagulls were encountered this time.
Today is an easy day, no hiking for us.
That’s protruding rock cliff ahead is Slea Head. This whole road we just took is named after it.
Well, that was fun. Time to turn inland and head back to Dingle where we’ll have a second more substantial lunch.
May not seem like it, but these were some of the narrowest two lane marked roads that I’ve driven on in Ireland. They are sometimes more difficult to pass oncoming traffic than the one lane roads with passing bubbles. Since the lanes are clearly marked, neither me nor the oncoming traffic yields or slows down much when passing, so we’d end up passing each other going at a high rate of speed with our inner mirrors just inches away from each other…gulp…
Made it back to Dingle. The plan is for me to chill at a coffee shop and blog while RL walks around town for a bit to browse the shops.
Found this little gem of a coffee shop in an alley…this is like 1 of maybe 4 alleys here in town.
So quiet and calming in here. I was able to catch up on some blogging and RL came back just in time as I was finishing up.
For such a small town, there’s a movie theater here!
There are many of these Off Licence signs here in Dingle on places that sells alcohol. Finally googled it, they can only sell alcohol on limited hours and have to stop selling by 10pm.
Walking towards the bay in Dingle. There’s quite a lot of activity over here.
Found our lunch spot, recommended by Lonely Planet…The recommendations have been hits so far…let’s see how it turns out this time.
Only serves fresh seafood caught locally. If they don’t like the catch, they don’t open.
I was really excited about these…but they were a little disappointing. Really really briny and kind of flavorless. A shame…
Good thing the oysters aren’t the only food I ordered, because this meal ended up being THE BEST MEAL I’ve had on this trip so far. The seafood chowder and the crab claws in garlic butter were both AMAZEBALLS!!(First time ever for me to use that term). RL’s pollack was equally delicious!!
Semi blue lobsters here in the tank inside the restaurant. The food was so good I kept on raving about it even after I had finished eating and left. Sooo good!!!
Top scoop is Irish coffee flavor with whiskey, delicious!
Love the how the red pops against the blue sky.
Statue of Fungie the dolphin, the most famous resident here in Dingle. Didn’t find out about Fungie until after I came here. Apparently Fungie came to the Dingle bay in 1983 by himself and has lived and interacted with the tourists and locals since then. Wow, 31 years!! Fungie is still alive today and there are tours everyday to go out into the bay to see him and he will come out to the boats almost everyday…It’ll be a sad day when Fungie dies of old age…:-( Also, dolphins are typically very social animals and it’s odd that Fungie choose to live by himself and associate with humans instead of his own kind…Fungie must be a pariah in the dolphin world.
Clever, using the stencil of Che Guevara as papa smurf.
Then we spent the rest of the afternoon resting inside our room. Me napping while RL watched Netflix. Not a bad way to spend the rest of the day time…then begrudgingly, I woke up from my nap to get some dinner.
Even though it’s Sunday night, they still have Irish music playing here. But first some food.
Again, Sunday night, so the restaurant was only half full, even though it looks all empty from this angle.
Crab trio and steak for both of us to share. They’ve got great beef over here in Ireland!! Delicious.
Then, onto the bar with live Irish music. Found this flyer on the table.
Ahhh, accordions everywhere! I miss playing mine.
This duo had pretty good chemistry and played an excellent set. By the way, all the musicians that we’ve seen play in bars here pay for their own drinks. I guess they just play at bars as a hobby/tradition?
OK, time to head home. Speaking of home, we are both really missing Austin and can’t wait to come back home. One more week!!
To be continued at Killarney Day 1.