no berries
that's right, there are no berries at all in this post. this may seem silly to mention, but the majority of this post is about our time in dingle. but no berries.
so, on wednesday after returning from portrush, i exchanged travel partners from rob to steph (sorry rob, but steph wins), and we headed off to dingle on the wonderful bus eireann. a million hours later, we finally arrived and found out two things pretty quickly. one, don't trust old guide books for current hostels, because they usually turn into lodges in that time. and two, of the million and two taxi companies in dingle, none of them ever answer the phone, unless you have the barkeep at a pub call.
anyway, having said that, dingle was a very nice little town. it is most definitely outside of the city, in the irish countryside, and it is very pretty. here is a picture of some of the countryside, taken by my lovely partner in crime.
so, the first night, we went out to the pub, had good food and listened to some very good traditional music. the singers there had many a lovely voice, and we heard some lovely songs. it was very neat, actually, one of the women started singing and instantly the entire bar went silent for the duration of the song. very cool. after that, however, the evening was less fun, because as i previously mentioned, cab companies don't like business out there, and so after failing to find one, we were forced to walk home. this was not very fun, as it was cold, windy, dark, and very evil. we were almost killed many times by many different supernatural evil forces, and we had to battle off many a demon by the time we reached the hostel. we decided the next night to make sure we could take a taxi.
we woke up the next day and decided to find a nice place to eat breakfast/lunch. more on the lunch side, since we had decided to sleep in. so we walked through town until we found a little out of the way place called the homely house cafe. it seemed nice enough, so we went in and sat down. we soon found out that it was a tex-mex cafe run by an LA native who lived now in dingle. he actually used to be a hollywood writer, and we found out that he used to be the head writer for the show dinosaurs. you remember that great show in the mid 90s, where everyone wore rubber suits? that's the one. pretty cool, right? so, we ate lunch, and then talked with the owner, and took about 3 hours overall, but we had some good conversation and some of the first healthy food all trip.
after our delicious meal, we decided to go see what was dingle's main attraction, fungie the dolphin. fungie is a dolphin that has lived in the dingle bay since 1983, and loves people. they have regular dolphin cruises to go see fungie, but unfortunately for us, it was rainy and windy, and the cruises were cancelled due to the lousy weather. here is steph by the statue of fungie, though, i think it's a good likeness.
we made it up to ourselves by going to the aquarium in town, which was a whole lot of fun. the highlights included a loggerhead turtle (either dylan or blink, we weren't sure), some white- and black-tipped reef sharks, a sting ray with a 5 foot wingspan, the piranhas (which were really ragged. you could tell they fought all the time, and one even had a huge chunk bitten out of his forehead. they were evil, let me tell you), and the touching pool, where we got to pet thornback rays, dogfish, and big flounder-like things called plaice. if you don't know what a thornback ray looks like, here is a picture of one:
these rays positively loved attention. they would swim right up to you and breach out of the water begging to be petted. either that or for food, but either way it was a lot of fun.
after that, we ate dinner (at another pub, we couldn't find another restaurant that didn't cost an arm and a leg), and caught a cab ride home. the next morning, after almost missing the bus, we hopped on from dingle to tralee, tralee to killarney, killarney to cork and cork to blarney. but that was a pretty short trip compared to dublin to dingle.
but more on that later.
cheers!
scott
so, on wednesday after returning from portrush, i exchanged travel partners from rob to steph (sorry rob, but steph wins), and we headed off to dingle on the wonderful bus eireann. a million hours later, we finally arrived and found out two things pretty quickly. one, don't trust old guide books for current hostels, because they usually turn into lodges in that time. and two, of the million and two taxi companies in dingle, none of them ever answer the phone, unless you have the barkeep at a pub call.
anyway, having said that, dingle was a very nice little town. it is most definitely outside of the city, in the irish countryside, and it is very pretty. here is a picture of some of the countryside, taken by my lovely partner in crime.
so, the first night, we went out to the pub, had good food and listened to some very good traditional music. the singers there had many a lovely voice, and we heard some lovely songs. it was very neat, actually, one of the women started singing and instantly the entire bar went silent for the duration of the song. very cool. after that, however, the evening was less fun, because as i previously mentioned, cab companies don't like business out there, and so after failing to find one, we were forced to walk home. this was not very fun, as it was cold, windy, dark, and very evil. we were almost killed many times by many different supernatural evil forces, and we had to battle off many a demon by the time we reached the hostel. we decided the next night to make sure we could take a taxi.
we woke up the next day and decided to find a nice place to eat breakfast/lunch. more on the lunch side, since we had decided to sleep in. so we walked through town until we found a little out of the way place called the homely house cafe. it seemed nice enough, so we went in and sat down. we soon found out that it was a tex-mex cafe run by an LA native who lived now in dingle. he actually used to be a hollywood writer, and we found out that he used to be the head writer for the show dinosaurs. you remember that great show in the mid 90s, where everyone wore rubber suits? that's the one. pretty cool, right? so, we ate lunch, and then talked with the owner, and took about 3 hours overall, but we had some good conversation and some of the first healthy food all trip.
after our delicious meal, we decided to go see what was dingle's main attraction, fungie the dolphin. fungie is a dolphin that has lived in the dingle bay since 1983, and loves people. they have regular dolphin cruises to go see fungie, but unfortunately for us, it was rainy and windy, and the cruises were cancelled due to the lousy weather. here is steph by the statue of fungie, though, i think it's a good likeness.
we made it up to ourselves by going to the aquarium in town, which was a whole lot of fun. the highlights included a loggerhead turtle (either dylan or blink, we weren't sure), some white- and black-tipped reef sharks, a sting ray with a 5 foot wingspan, the piranhas (which were really ragged. you could tell they fought all the time, and one even had a huge chunk bitten out of his forehead. they were evil, let me tell you), and the touching pool, where we got to pet thornback rays, dogfish, and big flounder-like things called plaice. if you don't know what a thornback ray looks like, here is a picture of one:
these rays positively loved attention. they would swim right up to you and breach out of the water begging to be petted. either that or for food, but either way it was a lot of fun.
after that, we ate dinner (at another pub, we couldn't find another restaurant that didn't cost an arm and a leg), and caught a cab ride home. the next morning, after almost missing the bus, we hopped on from dingle to tralee, tralee to killarney, killarney to cork and cork to blarney. but that was a pretty short trip compared to dublin to dingle.
but more on that later.
cheers!
scott
posted by Scott | 10:50 AM
2 Comments:
Scott!
I must agree with the accurate descriptions you've put in this entry, except you left out one thing...the beer! I just wanted to make sure this entry didn't get published without some mention of our great Murphy's discovery. :) Love you and keep up the great recounting of our travels. ~Steph
Scott:
Nice picture of Steph and Fungie! I'm glad to know Steph enjoyed the trip. I was worried about the blog since I couldn't get it up yesterday but you were probably adding to it. I look forward to more, Dad
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