10 July
I feel as if we are staying at a 5 Star Hotel with the breakfast we were served. Homemade bread, jam and butter and scrambled eggs fresh from the chickens in their backyard. The coffee was a wonderful French press. I love these people! Afterwards, Muireann got out the map of Slea Mead Drive, which was voted by National Geographic as the most beautiful drive (take that Ring of Kerry) and she marked out exactly what we should do and what we could skip. They were right about the day before so we were on the Muireann tour today.
First thing, let me say that this day was 90% raining. Pretty miserable and the wind was blowing with gale force. Ok, so what the heck? We are here and we've got our REI and our Eddie Bauer rain jackets...nothing can stop us.
We skipped a bunch of exhibits that charged money and just pulled over to take photos and then we went to a spot where, if one walks to the end of the path and hops a stone wall, one can walk through sheep fields and along cliffs to get to the farthest land west in Ireland...the piece of Ireland that is closet to the USA. So we were the ones who did. The wind was blowing so hard, I thought we would blow off the cliff. I was told later that this had actually happened to a tourist. That would explain why there were only four other people besides ourselves who actually attempted this. Thank goodness it wasn't raining at this point.
Driving a little further with not much visibility to see the true beauty of this place, we pulled into the next stop on Muireann's list, the Blasket Center. The Blasket Center? Yep, apparently there are some islands off of the coast called...you guessed it, the Blasket Islands which were inhabited by people up until 1953. Many of these people became writers. So very interesting and because it was really raining, we really enjoyed the Blasket Center. Here is a link if you are interested in finding out about them. http://www.dingle-peninsula.ie/home/the-blasket-islands.html After visiting the center we were supposed to take a hike down to the beach near the center, but the rain was coming down hard and it was a bit chilly and our fancy raincoats aren't fur-lined!
Onto the next adventure..Wine Strand...which is a beach...actually three beaches, but first lunch! We split a tuna melt at a cute roadside place and loved the two women in there who really wanted to come to the united states, so we gave them our contact info to stay with us. I hope they come! Then to the beach, but first, right next to the beach was none other than Kerry Brewery. We each had a half pint of one of their beers on tap and talked to the brewer and his wife and the people in the place...it was very cozy and warm and it was raining....But, then the rain stopped so we headed for Wine Strand. We didn't actually walk on that beach because Muireann said there were two other beaches that had beautiful rocks. We walked through the pouring rain for an hour gazing at the blue and green water, the moss covered rocks, and the sea life. We collected shells and rocks and finally realized that we were soaked so we turned and ran back to our car and cranked up the heat. By the way there are no photos of us being on these beaches because we couldn't risk the rain destroying our camera and cell phone.
We finished the Slea Mead loop and hurried back to town to eat so we could get the early bird special at Doyle's (our hosts' recommendation). We made it but were quite miserable in our wet pants eating our sea bass...that was delicious and flavorful enough to take our minds off of our wet butts. Afterwards we strolled through the city because the sun came out! We ate Murphy's Ice Cream: Irish Coffee, Double Chocolate, and Sweet Cream. We looked into all of the closed shops and dreamed of buying the beautiful Irish jewlrey and then we headed back to our lovely host's home where we talked for hours with the two young boys who told us all kinds of wonderful things such as, "Are you traveling to Belfast? You are? It's a lovely city. It's my most favorite city." and. "When I grow up I want to be a farmer or a zoo keeper and raise guinea pigs." or "Cheese burger is my second favorite word." or "Our dog kept biting the sheep's legs so we had to get rid of her." It really was fun. Oh, and then we all jammed with our drums, harmonicas, and xylophones and then we had tea and talked with Danny and Muirann about movies. We headed upstairs to their daughter's room for the second night and readied for our next adventure.
Life is peaceful. How wonderful that we stayed with people who had the same career as Jim.
The Traveling Women
Tip of the Day: Hold onto rocks and crouch low when walking along a cliff on a windy day.
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