Dingle Peninsula
Interesting fact: The Dingle Peninsula is a Gaelic-speaking area that was the setting for the Robert Mitchum movie Ryan's Daughter.
Our Comments: As soon as we parked, this seagull very graciously landed on the wall and commenced posing and preening for Jeff. The afternoon we arrived, Marge took a few of us around Slea Head Drive looking for photo-ops. On the drive, we got our first impromptu photography lesson and took lots of pictures of the beautiful, rugged coast line.
Dingle
Our Comments: Dingle is a fishing village full of brightly-painted homes. After two years of looking for a mug with Penny's name -- a must have for any self respecting college professor with an office and a desk -- Jeff finally found one at a wonderful little shop called "Penny's Pottery"! That evening, we went to a pub for traditional Irish music and met with a couple of college-aged girls from, get this -- Galena, Illinois! Gee, we only had to fly eight hours and then walk into a little pub in the middle of a town we suspect might be populated with 10,000 people to meet these kids. In fact, one of David's (Marge's husband) customers in the Galena area is a friend of theirs. But the night wasn't over; we also met a couple of other American guys that we continued to run into throughout the rest of our trip. At first, they were a bit shy, but they became much more friendly after we ran into them over and over, maybe a half-dozen times, all across Western Ireland.
Dunbeg Fort (An Dún Beag in Gaelic)
A Little History: Dunbeg is an Iron Age (580 B.C. to 500 A.D.) promontory fort (a promontory is a tongue of land protected by the sea on three sides and by a man-made fortified wall on the landward side). It's set on a 60-foot cliff above the sea and is comprised of four defensive walls. Inside these are a stone wall sealing off the promontory. An underground escape passage, situated at the entrance to the fort, connects with the interior of the fort where people and livestock were placed when under threat from rival tribes. An inner ground tunnel to the hill above is presumed to be for escape.
Conner Pass
Our Comments: Connor Pass, they say, is a winding, narrow route that climbs forever above "dark bogs and golden beaches." Not that we would know -- the fog was so bad that visibility was only as far as the van in front of us. But, trust us, the trip got better!
Travel Log -- Driving In Ireland: Driving on the left side of the road is much more difficult than you might imagine. The Irish can spot a rental car a mile off -- it always has a bashed-in left front quarter panel! You see, "main highways" in Ireland are about the width of a single-lane road here in the states. Negotiating those little byways is made even more problematic by the 3-foot stone walls lining virtually all the roads. Hence the bashed-in left front quarter panels. Jeff managed to get one of those dings himself, early in the trip, when a large tourist bus insisted on getting the right-of-way. (Editors Note: Ok, ok, in the now-immortal words of the car rental guy, I "dinged the wing"! So what?!?! I'm not defensive! Who's being defensive? Besides, you have to remember, Penny only drove the car long enough to say "I drove in Ireland.") Anyway, luckily Marge took out maximum insurance with no deductible -- good advice for anyone driving in Ireland for the first time. Also, instead of four-way stops or stoplights, Ireland uses "driver-confidence thwarters" called roundabouts -- at an intersection, drivers zoom around a big circle, clockwise, then duck out when they reach the road they need. Finally, other than some signs, we saw no indications of any actual traffic laws in Ireland; but, that said, we're sure we broke at least a few. We even saw one person drive up onto a city sidewalk in order to turn the car around in time to snag a parking space. None of the locals seemed to react at all or think it odd. Even triple parking is common in the larger towns.
