I don't think Ireland runs out of cute, big little towns. Dingle seems to be somewhere in size between Killarney and Blarney, but regardless of its size and obvious tourist appeal, it maintains a genuine small town charm. We walked through town past at least half a dozen local pottery workshops, probably twice as many little art galleries, cafes, and even a teeny little cheese shop. (We may or may not be bringing something back for Ross from said teeny little shop.) We also, after much nagging from me, got to try ice cream from Murphy's - another Bobby Flay recommendation. With flavors like sea salt, honeycomb, and brown bread, it makes for an interesting stop. For fresh made ice cream, prices were surprisingly reasonable, so Ben & I each got two flavors. Ben combined chocolate with Baileys while I had Baileys with whiskey. Although I am no whiskey drinker by any stretch of the imagination, this was a delicious mix. Again, thank you, Bobby Flay.
After nebbing into most shops on the main thoroughfares, we got back in the car for a change of pace. To save time on the (apparently) crap ton of driving Ben gets to do tomorrow to get us to Galway, we decided to tackle the Slea Head Drive along the edge of Dingle Peninsula before dinner. Aside from being outlandishly beautiful (shocker), there isn't too much particularly thrilling to report without having the pictures to show you yet. We did, however, stop at a few beaches along the coast that were quite lovely. One in particular required a long walk down a path carved into the cliff side, which provided a great look almost directly down on the beach. Several people had already made the requisite protestations of love in the sand below. We went a different route. With my muffled shouts from up on the path as guidance, Ben set out walking out the letters of Phi Delta Theta some six feet tall in the sand. I'm really excited to get those pictures uploaded to Facebook because I know the brothers will (excuse me, Mom) flip their shit.
The rest of the route was on narrow country roads through the mountains and along the coast. We had our first run in with a rogue sheep and opposing traffic. While I found it hilarious, Ben looked a bit stressed. The sheep hung out in front of our car while the opposing car passed. But, rather than being a good little sheepy and moving back out of the way once the other car was clear, he/she decided to remain firmly planted five feet directly in front of wherever we were, bleating in sheepy confusion all the while. It took another opposing car approaching for sheepy to finally move clear of our section of the lane and hop up onto the hedge that formed the barrier between roadway and pasture. We booked it around the sheep before it could change its mind and move back into our path.
We also had our first experience with the power of GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) sports. While driving through yet another one-lane-road, plopped-down-in-the-middle-of-farm-land kind of town, we noticed cars parked all along the edge of the narrow little roadway. Again, this is in the middle of farm land with only scattered houses here and there. The line of cars just stretched on and on. There were more cars along the road than houses we could see. We finally came up on whatever was such a big deal - a local hurling match on the town GAA pitch. Think the streets around your high school's football stadium filled with cars on a fall Friday night, but then put it in the middle of the idyllic Irish countryside and make sure literally every single person attends. It was wild. If we could have found a place to park the car, we probably would have stopped to watch.
It took a bit more driving through gorgeous scene after gorgeous scene before we drove back into Dingle. And we were hungry! As I mentioned earlier, I wanted some seafood. But in our walk around town earlier in the night, we had noticed the prices on the outdoor menu boards were severely out of our price range. I know a lot of you guys gifted us with graduation/trip moneys, but we couldn't bring ourselves to spend right around $30 for each entree. It just wasn't going to happen. So we consulted our handy dandy guidebook (which thought it was really funny when it listed several of these pricey restaurants as "midrange"), with our eyes pealed for the "budget" section. Funnily enough, we ended up at an authentic little (and I mean little) pizza place situated across the street from a huge tourist pub and next door to a swanky seafood restaurant. Oh, and by "authentic", I mean that there was one little old Italian guy with an adorable Italian accent whistling songs in the itty bitty kitchen while he made our pizzas. I got the quattro formaggi while Ben got the carnavore. Please contain your surprise as I tell you that I also took pictures of these yummy, yummy pizzas.
Novecento (the pizza place) was so tiny that only take out was available, so we brought it back to the B&B to eat. The plan was to catch up on Bones and Glee. Too bad there are some mysterious international rights issues so you can't stream US tv shows abroad. Instead, we started downloading rentals from iTunes to catch up later in the evening. In the meantime, we turned on channel RTE One to watch this year's Eurovision final. Talk of Eurovision has been all over the radio these past few days. Since we spend so much time in the car, it was hard not to know about it. If you didn't know, Eurovision is a huge freaking deal. Like, hundreds of millions of people watching across over 100 countries huge. As tonight is the final, the top 25 songs (of 43) were performed and we're watching the voting results now. Some of the songs were.. interesting. If you want to see the range of songs on offer, search for clips from Moldova, France, Ireland, and Georgia. There were a few I wouldn't mind hearing on US radio, although we've watched so many at this point that I can't remember all of them. Not to be biased, but Italy's was really good. We're still having trouble watching the tv show rentals on the iPad, so it looks like we'll be watching Eurovision 2011 through to the end. I'll let you know how that goes.
Tomorrow we have a lot of driving ahead of us. Not only do we need to get off the last of these peninsulas, but we've got a drive up the coast, a stop off at the Cliffs of Moher, and another long drive to Galway. Luckily, Galway is a hotel, rather than a B&B so we can check in rather late in the day. With B&Bs, it is apparently bad form to show up later than 5 or 6pm. With as much driving as the map and our previous hosts suggest we have ahead of us, we'll need the extra time to check in late in the day. It also helps that Galway is a two night stay, so arriving late the first night won't set us back too much in our excursions.
Well, after much trial and error, Ben got the tv rentals working. I'd love to catch up on our shows, but this Eurovision thing has gotten kind of addicting. It's about halfway through the voting results now and neither one of us seems willing to turn it off. This means tv and, unfortunately, photos too, are getting put off for a few more hours. Hopefully some of the drive tomorrow will be only averagely beautiful, so I won't feel bad about getting the netbook out to organize photos in the car. Not sure if we have internet in the Galway hotel, but hopefully another post and a few more photos will be added then.
Until next time..
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