The Whispering Pines B&B, our home for 3 nights, was recommended by Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, and Rick Steves, and now we know why. The host Mary and her family are all incredibly welcoming, and it’s more like staying at a relative’s house than in a hotel. Mary runs the place with her daughter Kathleen, and the grandkids are helping out and/or running around during the summer. The breakfasts are all freshly home made and delicious. I had french toast with fruit 3 days in a row, while Ryan tried them all, the full Irish breakfast, french toast, and then scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on the last morning. Mary and Kathleen chatted with us during breakfast. They have a first cousin who’s daughter lives in Austin and wanted to know if we knew her (we did not). They suggested some activities in the area and found us a local GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) football match to attend. Kathleen also recommended a local self service laundry, very necessary since sock supply was running very low.

Walking back to the B&B with our clean laundry, we stopped at a cafe for coffee. I realized that I’ve only been drinking coffee if I can get it with soy milk, which is such a joke considering all the cheese, cream, butter, and eggs I’ve been eating on this trip! Guess it’s just a habit.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around the Dingle Peninsula. Doesn’t the word ‘Dingle’ just sound funny?  We stopped at Inch Strand, a beach that, while much colder in temperature, reminded us a bit of Port A, where everyone drives out and parks on the beach. There were also some crazy people actually out surfing in the water.

We then drove out to Dingle, towards the end of the penninsula, and caught a bit of the local Dingle Regatta races taking place. The drive between Inch Strand and Dingle was incredibly scenic, exactly what I pictured Ireland to be with green rolling hills.

Shared lunch platter in Dingle consisting of fish & chips, seafood chowder, and smoked salmon. Delicious!

The cows photo-bombed my scenic landscape photo

Our time in Dingle was cut short in order to get back to Kenmare for the football match. The drive took a bit longer than expected when traffic was stopped to allow the local cows to cross the street.

We watched a local senior level game between the Kenmare Shamrocks and Kerins O’Rahillys. Gaelic football is a bit of a mix between soccer and rugby. We spent most of the first half trying to figure out the rules, and then a local helped us out the second half filling in the blanks and describing out the scoring worked. The home team won! The field was in the most amazing location, with mountains in the background.

Words to live by, found on the streets of Kenmare

This is our B&B room. Can you find the bathroom? It is through the wardrobe doors!

Another day with a lot of driving! This blog is getting repetitive in that respect. According to GoogleMaps, the drives are not that long. However, it does not appear that GoogleMaps takes into account the windy narrow roads, where one cannot actually drive the posted speed limit, or tractors, sheep, or cows in the road slowing forward progress. More from Ryan on driving later, he plans to write a whole blog post about it.

Nothing beats the convenience of having a car though. First stop, a last minute decision since the route took us right past it, was Dunguaire Castle. It turned out to be another Tower House, interesting in that it had been updated a few times since originally being built in the 1500s. The tower hosts traditional banquets, but I read they were very touristy and envision something like Medieval Times.

We then passed a sign for a chocolate factory up the road, and of course Ryan and I had to stop! It turned out to be a cute place that buys their cocoa beans from around the world including Madagascar, Cuba, Venezuela etc and makes all their chocolates in house. We sampled the Madagascar dark chocolate, which was surprisingly complex, with a description one would expect of a wine.

The Cliffs of Moher was the highlight stop of the day. Similar to Dun Aengus, this is an amazing natural location on the edge of the Atlantic with cliffs dropping straight off into the ocean. The weather was slightly better than the previous day, but still very windy. It is definitely a bit freaky standing on the edge of a cliff with those strong gusts! We did a little off-roading along the trails to get some good views of the cliffs. Unfortunately, we did not see any puffins, the clown birds of Ireland that live in the area. The visitor center at the cliffs was built into the landscape and reminded us a bit of the passage tombs.

Visitor center built into the hill

We finished up at the cliffs just as it was starting to rain, and began the long drive to Kenmare. During a stop at a pub in a small town for lunch, we had the opportunity to watch the Irish O’Donovan brothers earn the silver medal finish in the 2 man lightweight sculls (rowing). This was the first medal for Ireland at the Rio Olympics and the first medal ever in rowing for Ireland. The locals in the bar were ecstatic and it was a lot of fun watching the event with them. We heard about the event over and over on the radio for the rest of the day.

A warm welcome from Mary greeted us at our B&B in Kenmare. We dropped our stuff and walked into town to grab a light dinner, becoming entranced by the 20 km Olympic speed walking event on TV.

The weather has really been wonderful for us so far, until today. We drove in rainy, windy weather an hour to take a ferry in rainy, windy weather another hour to arrive on the Aran Island of Inishmore, in rainy, windy weather. Ryan saw dolphins swimming along side of the ferry, but I was too busy sleeping trying to avoid the motion sickness. The original plan was to rent bikes and bike around the small island to the various sites. That was quickly nixed (I am only a fair weather cyclist) for a small 15 person bus tour given by a local named Rory. It turned out to be pretty good. He drove us around to all the sites, stopping along the way to point out of things of interest and answering all our questions about life on the island. During the long stop at Dun Aengus, Rory picked up his maybe 10 year old son and his friend, who joined us on the second half. I asked what his son did during the summer, and it sounded exactly like kids in the US; soccer camp for two weeks, swimming camp for two weeks, music camp for two weeks, etc.

Our ferry

The island is about 15 km tall by 4 km wide and has 14 separate villages. Residents must take the ferries (or the plane) over, so are limited getting to and from the island. The schools are taught in Irish, and some kids from the mainland come to school on the island primarily for that reason. They take a ferry over at the beginning of the week and then stay with families and head home for the weekends. The island also has its own nursing home, but has a shortage of nurses.

Thatched roof houses that used to be popular on the island

Dun Aengus is the main site on Inishmore. It is a prehistoric circle fort sitting on a cliff, dating back to 1100 BC. The fort was updated and added on to multiple times, they think around 500 BC and then multiple times afterwards. There is still a lot of unknowns surrounding the exact timeframe of the construction of the fort.

The walk up to Dun Aengus at the top of the hill

Some perspective of how the fort is situated at the edge of the cliffs

The seal colony is one of the other big attractions on the island. One large seal was lounging on a rock, while another one kept poking his head out of the water to say hi.

After our tour, we had some time to spare and stopped for a light snack and drinks. Ryan’s first Smithwicks of the trip!

Luckily, the ferry ride back was not quite as rough as the one over. We were beat from the day and decided to do a light snack/dinner in the hotel and go to sleep.

P.S.  Well, we made it over half way through the trip, to August 15th, the date of this posting . . . But it wouldn’t be a trip abroad if Ryan didn’t get sick.  Hopefully, it is just a mild cold and passes quickly!  The local pharmacy gave him some stuff to take, and he brought some amazing nasal spray he bought in Norway last year when he got sick.  Keeping fingers crossed.