day 3 - march 18, 2009

Good thing we didn't get ruined on St. Paddy's day, because the day after we set out on a wee road trip. We wanted to see more of Ireland than just Dublin in our limited time on the island so we chose a place called... DINGLE. Purely on its name. And the guidebook said it was quite lovely. And kp wanted the chance to refer to the locals as "Dingleberries". So, decision made, we hit the road.
The Dingle Peninsula is on the southwest coast of Ireland. To get there, we had to drive through Limerick where we stopped for lunch.


It was delicious, but in retrospect, I wish we had stopped at the Obama Cafe, which we passed on our way. Did you know that Barack Obama is Irish? It's true. Ask any Irishman.

We were confined to the car for the day, so we worked on learning new Irish words.

knacker: Irish gypsy
Barry's: black tea
white tea: Barry's with milk
leg it: run really fast, like if your ride is leaving without you and you need to leg it in order to catch up

And we took photos from the car when we saw things we loved. Which was pretty much constantly.

I love dogs. kp loves lens flares.

We love a thatched roof. (thatched roofs? rooves?)

We love ruined castles.

The sun started to set the closer we got to Dingle. We decided to take the more scenic route through the Conor Pass, which is the highest mountain pass in Ireland. The views from the road are breathtaking with a side of terrifying since the road is rather narrow and very high up.

Here's a short video of Ciaran driving up the road.. you might want to turn the sound down because there is a lot of wind noise.

We stopped at the top and took some photos in the fading light of the day.
We arrived into Dingle itself with no idea of where we were going to stay for the night. B, in classic B form, made us assess all of our options before choosing where to sleep for the night, but in the end we ended up at the Hideout Hostel. It was affordable, clean, and quiet, with an en-suite bathroom in our room and the merest hint of the smell of a nice old lady. It was like staying at Grandma's house--she even turned down the sheets for you.

Once we had dumped our stuff, we went back out to explore the town. We asked a few people on the street where we should eat dinner, where we should grab a pint, etc. and by far my favourite recommendation was to check out Foxy John's--hardware store by day, bar by night.
Upon entering, to your right is the hardware bit and to your left is the bar bit. Both sides have stools to sit and either dig through a box of bolts or sip your guiness. Or both.

This is what kp's bar would look like, if she ran one.

We ended up at the most Irish pub on the street, "An Droichead Beag", where there was live Irish music complemented by Irish set dancing. We spent the rest of our evening there sipping Guiness and wishing we could do this:

After a while, I realised that the patrons had gone from being Irish to obnoxious Americans (they may have been Canadians, but I would like to blame their drunken behaviour on another country because it was just embarrassing for all involved). Was it a trick? Were the Irish townspeople (Dingleberries) there early on just to convince us this was a real, live, authentic Irish bar? And then once we were fooled we would stay and buy a ton of pints of Guiness? Well, we were fooled. It worked. And we drank Guiness until the wee hours. And yes, it does taste much, much better in Ireland.