Day Four
"The Dingle Peninsula"
We got up and hit the dining room at Bambury's for breakfast (this being a "bed & breakfast", after all). They'd taken this dining room and placed a number of small tables in it. There was a bigger table in the middle of it, filled with all kinds of cereals, fruits, and pitchers of juices. Some soothing music was playing as well. We sat down, and the girl in the kitchen heard us (we were either the only ones staying there the night before or everyone else was sleeping late) and came out to take our order. We both decided to go light and stick to cereals (and cheese, oddly enough), and just had some toast and jam brought out.
After I got out of the shower and was getting ready in the bathroom, I had an interesting experience. The bathroom window is the kind you really can't see through, all frosted glass. And Bambury's is right up against a pasture. I hadn't realized there were a number of cows standing right outside the bathroom window until one of them started mooing quite loudly. This, in turn, set the others off, and soon the bathroom was nearly shaking from the noise of it. Not something you get a lot in San Diego.
We decided we'd spend a second night in Dingle, since we were having such a fine time there, so we didn't check out. Leaving our things, we jumped in the Fiat for a tour of the Dingle Peninsula. Russ's book had a breakdown of this drive--about a 30 mile drive--that was supposed to be quite scenic. We'd gotten addicted to scenic the day before, so we were looking forward to this. Off we went.
The weather wasn't sunny this day, but cloudy and misty...which was perfect for this journey, and made it look like what I always envisioned Ireland to look like. The mist and light fog added a sort of dreamlike quality to everything. Our first stop was a beach we found. It was nothing like the beach at Inch, but still a nice stop. It was a little more rocky than sandy. And it had a number of trailers overlooking it. An Irish trailer park? That was a first. If there was anyone living in them, they weren't awake that time of morning, because we were pretty much alone out there, except for a woman who drove up, got out, and started her morning run down the beach.
The beach we came across as our tour of the Dingle Peninsula began Monday morning
We soon came to a place to pull off that had a sign speaking of a prehistoric fort...with just rock walls left, mostly. Looked interesting, but the long gravel path down to it wasn't going to work for me. So I sent Russ down with the video camera. He checked it all out, and found it was a great site, right down on the water, to get some impressive cliff shots, too. We'd left beaches behind, now (or so we thought...we'd find another soon), and the shore was all rocks and cliffs, with waves crashing into them. Our coastline drive continued...ocean to our left, hills to our right. It was made more adventurous by a road that got down to one lane, this windy mountain road that made a head-on collision pretty plausible. At one interesting point, we came up on a creek...one that ran right over the road. No, no bridge. You have to drive over the creek. We kept driving and stopping, taking pics, including one of this roadside unexplained crucifixion sculpture. No sign telling what it's about. It's just there, in the middle of nowhere, beside this mountain road. I loved how few people there were around. Occasionally another car with a tourist or two would drive by us, and we'd occasionally pass a local, maybe walking a dog. But there was a real feeling of seclusion out here, which was great. It made me glad that we came in March, because I could just imagine summertime, that little road crowded with lines of cars and tourists in Nascar tee shirts. Wouldn't have been the same.
Me checking out the shore along the Peninsula
After a while driving down the coast, we took a turnoff where some other cars were. People were getting out and walking down this steep stone walkway. Looked like it was going down to this very small, secluded beach. It was a ways to go with the chair, and it would have been a pain trying to push me back up the thing. So, what the heck...Russ decided we'd just drive down there. We spent the whole drive down wondering aloud if we'd be able to get the Fiat back up. We passed up pedestrians along the way, who looked at as like we were a little crazy. But the trusty Fiat got us down. And for some reason no one else seemed to come down after us, so maybe they did think we were nuts. It was just this little tiny area of beach, cut off by rocks on either side. It was beautiful down there. More pics and video were got. Then we put the spurs to the Fiat, and it made the climb back up.
Russ on the small beach we drove down to
We took the Fiat for another little adventure on this drive, too. We got off the main road to kind of see what was around. We ended up hanging out with a bunch of sheep, initially. Then a little road took us down to where the coast was again, and we were looking down on this hidden cove. The trail took us down to it, where we found this (as far as I could tell) abandoned pier. So we just drove right up onto it. Another amazing site, this cove. The water was so green. Rocks all around us, sheep climbing around above, the ocean rolling in and back out. And not a soul in sight anywhere (unless sheep have souls, but that's another topic).
Me and Russ down at the hidden cove
We got back from our sightseeing and chilled a little bit before thinking about lunch. Then we went back to Murphy's to do this. Our waiter recognized us and told us he'd seen us at the Dingle Pub the night before, and it looked like we were having quite a good time (getting the wheelchair up on a table isn't that easy, so I assume I wasn't dancing on one...). Told you it was a small town. Russ later got into a discussion with him regarding the Budweiser sign behind the bar...and how much that disgusted Russ. Our waiter said, as though he'd answered the question before, "It tastes different here". Apparently you're not getting exactly the same Bud in Ireland as you would in Toledo. Neither of us were in the mood to test this theory. Apparently the Budweiser's pretty popular with the ladies in Ireland. Who knew? After lunch we did a little more shopping and explored the rest of Dingle. I got some stamps and mailed my postcards, but mail had already been picked up, so they wouldn't be going out until the next day. It was almost a sure that I'd be beating my postcards home. Oh, well. We hit the Dingle Pub again for a pint, but at this time of day it was pretty empty. Along the way we also found an internet cafe. What the heck...we decided to check up on and send some e-mail (at 2.60 euro per hour, it's a bargain). Specifically I sent one to my sister, so she could pass the word back to my mother that I was still alive (you know how moms worry when you travel around the world during a time of war...).
After dinner at a place that really disappointed us both (can't even remember the name), we wandered the mean streets of Dingle some more. Wanting to try a little more live music, we came upon a place--John Benny Moriarty's--and decided to check it out. Some girls sat down next to us, and some communication was attempted, but both the language barrier (I think they were all from different countries, and none spoke English very well) coupled with the loudness of the place made that too much of a pain. However, Russ did spot the girl and the older woman we'd seen at the Dingle Pub the night before. Actually, we'd run into them briefly on the street earlier in the day. They'd walked by and said "Hey, hello from last night". At that time we didn't have much of a conversation, as they decided to say hello right as the wheelchair was stuck getting up a curb and Russ was fighting to get it up without dumping me over. So Russ headed to the bar and invited them to join us, which they did. As it turns out, our earlier assumption about their relationship was...um...slightly off. They were mother and daughter. Patricia was the mother, and Bethany, her daughter, was a law student. They were both from Chicago, but Bethany was going to school in New York. They were vacationing together. Both of them turned out to be a whole lot of fun, and we had a great evening with them. So maybe not ALL Americans in Ireland are bad...
Where we hung out our last night in Dingle with Patricia and Bethany
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