Ireland Day 8, Part 2: Arrival in Dingle

Descending the pass toward Dingle revealed lovely views of water and greenery.  The roads here were even more twisting than the ones up the mountain.  The bags on the backseat slid back and forth, whacking into each other and against the car doors with a thud-whump-thud kind of cadence. It was one of those moments that cracks you up at the time, but I couldn't explain to you now why it was so funny.  Must have been all that mountain air.

We kept craning our necks out the windows, wondering when we'd see Dingle.  It snuck up on us, and, all of a sudden, there we were with lovely harbor to one side and cozy-colorful buildings on the other, variegated shops and pubs marching around and over the hilly downtown streets.

Ireland Day 7, Part 4: Doolin town, Cliffs of Moher by land

Cliffs of Moher ferries: more exciting than Six Flags for a fraction of the price.

Suffice it to say that we made it back in one piece from the Cliffs of Moher ferry.  Thoroughly chilled to the bone, we took some time to collect ourselves in the renowned O'Connor's pub.  It gets some serious points for kitsch factor - they had police badges from all around the world on the walls, and license plates as well.  (Is this a tourist pub thing? We saw it a couple times during our trip.)

Ireland Day 7, Part 1: Doolin to Inisheer via ferry

Not gonna lie, even Seattleites don't call this "clear weather".

We have new neighbors, and they moo.  

Considering that I’m a city girl at heart, I surprisingly have a sense that I could get used to this.  The greenness of the hills out the window is simply amazing.  There’s also something pretty funny about having a conversation be punctuated from time to time by a lowing moooo in the background.  Who knows, it might get old after a while, and I might also feel differently if we were downwind.  As it is, I can’t smell the cows, just see and hear them.  All the romanticized benefits without any of the olfactory downsides!

First breakfast at the restaurant downstairs was lovely: muesli (cue immense excitement), homemade brown bread with golden Irish butter (yes, the butter is better here), creamed oatmeal with honey, and melt-in-your-mouth locally smoked salmon with a fluffy mound of scrambled eggs.

Ireland Day 6, Part 2: Coastal drive to Doolin town

After winding our way through the Burren, it was time to start thinking about getting to Doolin.  We drove north from Poulnabrone Dolmen up to Ballyvaughan, which is almost due west of Kinvarra (the town just 30 minutes south of Galway which we'd driven through initially).  So, after 5+ hours of travel we'd essentially come as far north again as we'd gone south.  The reason?  A scenic drive, of course!

From Ballyvaughan we followed the coastline west and then southward, taking in beautiful seaside views.  As official "make sure we don't die" driver extraordinaire, Jason had to be careful not to goggle too much.  These roads were very serpentine.

Ireland Day 4, Part 1: Galway city

This morning began with our first ever Irish breakfast, made fresh by our hosts at the B&B: a sunny side up egg, two slices of bacon, balsamic tomatoes, and a really fantastic sausage, all on a plate artfully dotted with homemade basil oil. 

An amazing breakfast at the B&B

Ireland Day 3, Part 2: Arrival in Galway

We eventually arrived at the B&B intact. Once we got past an extended parking debacle which I won’t detail here (like my inability to dial Irish phone numbers on the first day, entirely a matter of user error), we were off to hit the town.  Well, sort of.

We decided to keep it simple and visit the Crane Pub just around the corner, hearing from our hosts that the trad (short for traditional) music there is exceptional.   After all, we’d been in Ireland for about a day and a half at this point, and still hadn't visited an Irish pub or had Guinness.  This was a problem which required immediate rectification.