*NOTE: PICTURES COMING SOON*
By Sarah Ann
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Last night after Christian and Mom went to bed, Dad and I went to Gus O'Connor's pub. Like most pubs, O'Connor's has live music that starts at nine on the weekdays, and I wanted to dance. Dad ordered a Sprite as I talked to the musicians. They played a few songs while I put on my hard shoes (the Irish dance shoes that make noise). I approached the band to see if they were ready for me to dance, and who was there—Ossian and Faolan! Remember the two boys from my dance class I mentioned being on the same flight as? Of the over 7,000 pubs in Ireland, we happened to be at the same pub at the same time. Life can be pretty crazy. We danced together. Ossian and Faolan were there to fiddle with the band, and as we stayed to enjoy the music for a bit. A lot of the customers (mostly Americans) asked me questions. An American girl asked me to teach her some dance, and pretty soon I was teaching five kids the Jig. It was fun—and the waiter even told Dad he didn’t have to pay for the Sprite!
We left this morning after eating a continental breakfast (no time for a Full Irish one) and drove an hour to Adare. Adare is a cute town with colored shops and white houses with thatched roofs, from when the British settled in the 1200s. I got a piece of homemade brown bread from an Irish bakery, and we headed on.
A few random observations:
Most of the streets we’ve driven on are very narrow and winding. Cars drive a wide range of speeds—some on the small roads will be driving the speed limit of 100 km/hr (about 62 mi/hr) while some cars will be inching along the highway.
Pretty much all the places we’re going to in Ireland are pretty touristy because pretty much all of Ireland is pretty touristy. In 2019, Ireland had 4.9 million residents and 11.3 million tourists. Since we are traveling during the week in March though, the towns aren’t swarmed with tourists thankfully.
The cafes give out paper cutlery rather than plastic.
People are super friendly.
We were driving the hour-and-a-half to County Kerry when we got stopped by the police. Perhaps they were just doing a survey, but if it was a security checkpoint, we would have failed except for our cute American accents and Mom. See, the police asked Dad, who was driving, where we were coming from. He responded “Dingle.” Mom corrected him that we were coming from Doolin and going to Dingle. The police asked Dad where Doolin was. Dad hesitated, then said in Ireland. Mom interjected again and said County Clare.
There were sheep along the whole route, but as we approached Inch Beach (which turned out to be definitely longer than an inch), the sheep lining the road were all multicolored. It looked as if someone had spray painted the wool turquoise or red-pink. We later learned this was their method of “branding,” since sheep often share pastures with neighboring farmers.
We continued to the town of Dingle. Dingle was super cute—colorful houses lining the shore. We ate crepes, watched seals paddle in the water, and ate ice cream (I ordered Irish brown bread flavor, and it tasted delicious).
We then began the famous drive around the Dingle peninsula. The Dingle peninsula is part of the Wild Atlantic Way, which is a route along Ireland’s west coast that tourists drive. There are lots of stops along the way. The Dingle peninsula is one of the most famous parts of it.
We stopped at a few ancient ruins. At one, we seemed to be on someone’s farm. We passed his pen of sheep, paid him entrance, and walked through his pasture, careful to stay out of the way of the tractor. The ruins, called “beehive huts” date back to before 500 AD. When I think of Ireland, locked in my memory will be the ocean behind us, smashing against black cliffs, Christian and I running through green fields of someone’s farm, our parents walking behind us, running to ancient structures, the chilly breeze rushing against our faces, seeming as if it is just us, the land, and ancient stones. But the feeling was only partially a reality—the tour bus whizzed down the road behind us.
We continued on the drive. Mom says it was one of the craziest roads she’s driven on. It took the narrow, windy, hilly roads we’d driven on before to a new extreme, and driving along a cliff added to the drama. The drive was beautiful. Along one bend, stood a bright white Christ statue, striking against the dark black cliffs. Around the next bends stood more dilapidated ruins. Turn again to see baby lambs sticking their heads through the fence.
We drove to Killarney, where we’re sleeping the next two nights, and after some trouble finally found our house. We entered X pub for dinner, tried to order, only to find out they only have drinks (oops–no wonder there was no one else under 21.) Instead, we went to Murphy’s pub, where our waitress called us all “my darling," and I danced again!
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