Sorry for the long delay between posts, but since my return from Paris I got sick for several days and have been having major internet issues at the dorms. Let me preface this post by saying that the day I'm blogging about was probably one of the days I feel best defines Ireland and what I love about this country. Hopefully it was worth the wait!
After breakfast in the B&B, we loaded up the van with our luggage and set out to drive around the Dingle Peninsula. It was my mom's first day driving in Ireland and for the most part she did really well - though we're still not entirely sure where the bottom chunk of the passenger side mirror ended up.
On our journey around the Peninsula there was so much amazing scenery. The day was foggy/overcast but lately that seems to have become the normal weather. Along the way we ended up stopping at a "famine" exhibit. It was basically a plot of land where the owner had rebuilt some structures and put up information about the Great Famine. But there were also some mannequins that I can only describe as creepy. They made me think of the movie Child's Play. I mean, I understand the purpose they were serving, but they were still creepy. See for yourself:
Anyways, we continued on our drive. There were tons of scenic stops to make along the road. We pulled onto the should a number of times to snap photos - which wasn't exactly easy considering the size of the van versus the size of the roads. Here is a small selection of the images I captured:
We made a couple other stops while we were driving around. The first was at a little cafe where we all shared some pie. None of us were actually hungry, but some people wanted to use the bathroom and they are very strict in Ireland about bathrooms being for customers only ha. We also stopped at a pottery shop. After taking a pottery wheel class this past summer, I have a new appreciation for just how hard it is to create some of the pottery pieces.
At one point we stopped at a pier/boat launch. My grandpa and I ventured down to the water while almost everyone else stayed up by the road. It was fun being down there, collecting rocks together. Kelsey and Dan ended up joining us. Though our fun was cut short by the bored passengers up at the van, we were able to collect enough interesting rocks so that each person could have one.
Since some people were more interested in going back to Dingle for shopping, that's where we headed. Back in Dingle for a few hours, we all set out on our own to explore and shop. There was a really cute store called Mad Hatters which, as you can guess, had a bunch of really interesting and stylish hats inside.
They seemed pricey and I'm not a huge hat person, so I didn't get one, but I still think they were grand. I ended up running into Kelsey and Dan while they were getting some take-away food at a place called Harrington's. Kelsey got some seafood chowder and it actually came with what I'm guessing were mussels still in their shells.Departing from Dingle, we headed for Limerick. We were staying the night in Limerick so that the next morning I could catch the bus back to Dublin in time for my afternoon Arabic language class. We ended up booking rooms at the Clifton House B&B. Upon our arrival we had tea and coffee and talked with the owner, Michael. Then we met his adorable dog, a boxer named Jake. It'd been so long since I had been around a dog, I had forgotten how much I love them.
For dinner, we were trying to decide whether to drive into the city centre area and deal with parking the van. Ultimately we decided to check out the Woodfield Hotel/Bar & Restaurant across the street from the B&B - and that was one of the best decisions we made. The food, drinks and prices were reasonable but it was the atmosphere that made it brilliant.
As we were eating our meals we kept seeing this little, old Irish man (who we later found out was named Willie) in a beige suit coat with stark white hair and big, dark bushy eyebrows coming through the bar area. Once in a while he would stop and give us some grief like, "You're all still here?" and then run off. Eventually, a woman named Theresa came in to order drinks at the bar and started talking to us. She seemed a little tipsy but she was really sweet and personable. Apparently I reminded her of herself when she was younger, so she took a liking to me. She ended up leaving her husband sitting outside with their friends and joined us at our table. From there, she gradually introduced us to all her friends as they came in the bar for drinks.
I don't know how it really happened but suddenly we seemed to know everyone in the bar and we were all drinking, laughing, and talking. Then my grandpa started singing songs with some of the people there and they didn't stop singing until hours later. It was so grand. Here are some YouTube links to a couple short snippets of everyone singing:
The people there were so genuine and welcoming. Theresa ended up deciding that since I'm staying in Ireland without any family around, she was going to take care of me and be my "Irish Mama". She kept insisting that I put her down as my emergency contact at school because she could get to me a lot faster than my own mom in the U.S. Plus she has a brother-in-law that is a doctor in Dublin, so if anything ever happened to me, she'd make sure I was taken care of and looked after. Another woman, Frida, also gave me the contact information for her son who lives in Dublin.At some point the bar was supposed to close, but since we were all still wanting to buy drinks, they opened up again ha. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning we made it back across the street to our B&B. When we got in Michael was there to great us and said, "Oh was that you all singing over there?". Then it was off to bed since we needed to be ready for breakfast early in the morning.
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