Amsterdam in vignette: Bicyclists

"When you're on two wheels in Amsterdam," our bike guide had said, "You're immediately higher up in the food chain."

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 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.

Intermezzo #1: Irish food

Ice cream from Murphy's in Dingle.  Foreground: Honeycomb caramel and Guinness. Background: brown bread and chunky peanut butter.

I think it’s time to come up for air on the (somewhat) daily postings, because there are some topics I’d love to talk about outside of the daily travel blogging.

First and foremost: don’t let anyone try to tell you that good Irish food doesn’t exist, that it’s simply a spinoff of English food, or, worse yet, that it’s all deep fried.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.