Ireland trip day five

Wednesday 6/2/10

We started the day by going to get our tire fixed. Here they spell tire, tyre. We drove out into the country to find this little bitty shop. He took one look at our tire and said "bet you got that driving on the Ring of Kerry" and then proceeded to mumble something in Irish about lots of blow outs. He promptly sold us another tire, lest we get caught with another flat, and fixed the bent rim on the wheel. Michael and I were prepared for the worst but it ended up only being 55 euros. We thought we had won the lottery and ran out of there before he decided to charge us more.

Our next stop was at the bank. We needed to deposit the balance of our cottage rental into our landlady's account. While we were there we spied the farmer's market on the square. It was the perfect day for it. The sun was shining and there was a gentle breeze. The market was unlike the one we had seen in Philly. There were vendors from all over Europe there. Most of them were not speaking English. We saw all kinds of cheeses and meats, veg (they don't say the whole word for vegetable here) and plants, and a yummy assortment of cakes and pies. We only bought cupcakes but everything looked wonderful.

Then we headed out of town to the last peninsula on this side of Kerry. We went to the Dingle Peninsula. Unlike the Ring of Kerry this road is much less traveled. The mammoth buses stayed off these roads. But it was their loss because the views here were even more spectacular. The views were more "beachy" than the other rings which put Michael right at home. He was in hog heaven looking at those sandy beaches. We have a ton of pictures from this ring.

There was a km by km driving tour that we were following from Rick Steves' book. It was excellent and educational. We saw the house that Tom and Nicole stayed in while filming "Far and Away". We also saw the fields that the farmers like the character Joseph were trying to grow potatoes in. There are still a lot of remnants from the great famine here. Many houses were abandoned and were just left to decay. Many of them you can tour for several euros. That is one thing that the Dingle Peninsula people have figured out. How to get a tourist to spend some money. Every little rock, house, or hut on this leg of the tour had a dollar sign on it- or rather a euro sign. Michael and I passed most of them up except one. We stopped at this one place that had a ten minute "gentle walk" uphill to see these giant cliffs. You can't tell from the road. It just looks like a field and all of a sudden the field ends and there is a 800 foot drop off. It was magnificent. Beautiful views. We will post pictures eventually but they will never do the country justice. You have to see it to believe how beautiful it is.

We stopped in the town of Dingle, whose Gaelic name is pronounced "on dang en". Dingle is a very prosperous town. Mostly due to their keen sense of how to get money from tourism. The town is also known for its participation in a government initiative. They are trying to preserve as much of their Gaelic heritage as possible. In the schools they speak only Gaelic and all the street signs are in only Gaelic. Most of the country has everything listed in both English and Gaelic but not this town. Around the really scary bends in the road it says "go mall" which means, drive slow. I kept yelling "GO MALL" at him. He didn't appreciate it as much as I did but we both had fun.

On the way home we drove through "Connor Pass". This road is not even two lane suggested. It is just a plain old one lane road with a big giant cliff on one side of the car. If someone else comes you have to back up to an area where there "might" be enough room for both of you to pass. There was no whisking on this road either. There was only a stone wall and a cliff. Yikes. Michael drove like a pro. We made it home and decided to eat the rest of our lasagna so we could stay in.

As a side note to today's travels, here are some observations I have made about Ireland:

*The toilet paper is thick like a paper towel but not as rough.
*The water is not hard and perhaps a little more soft than at home.
*There are not many road kill animals.
*Everything is very small: small toilet, small chairs, small cars, small roads, small people, small sheep...you see what I mean.
*It's a very pretty country.
*They sell lots of Irish made items and have a lot of country pride.
*Downtown areas thrive and there are no Wal-marts.
*Driving on the left is not something we can do naturally.

Have a great evening and thanks for reading my blog. Stay tuned for more adventures!