Dingle Peninsula

on our second day, we drove from Bunratty (where our first B&B was located and we drove to a place called Dingle. this is the place where Irish go to vacation - a little resort town located on a huge bay from the atlantic ocean.

On our way, we stopped at King john's castle. It was the first of many ruined castles we visted. it was commisioned by King John II (the only King John in English history). He is the King John from Robin Hood stories. it was a very cool castle. it highlighted what I knew to be true. that the Irish are still incredibly bitter about their occupation by the british. very bitter. and they bitch about it. Rather than focus on the castle, though, Kim and I went through a gate we clearly weren't supposed to go through into a church that was abandoned.

the fascinating thing about this church was that it had turned into a graveyard, with this church as the center piece. in fact, the church was just like another tomb in the middle. it was really pretty and really creepy. It was really sad because it became a picture for the church in europe; gorgeous. stunningly pretty. but dead and empty. i worry that the chruch in america is heading that way.


we next drove through Adare, Ireland, which is exactly what you expect from Ireland. 12th c. ireland. little cottages, thatched roofs, old churches. very pretty. We also got suckered into this little "Celtic Park" which had "recreations" of authentic celtic things - stone circles and such. very cheesy. but the guy running it was phenomenal and he gave us a great trip.

to get to Dingle, on the little penninsula (see map), we were going to take the highway. he gave us a heads up, and we headed through conner's pass, a 1 lane road into the mountains which cut the penninsula in half.

it was like a mountain pass in the appalachain mountains (the whole of Ireland's mtns reminded me of the smokey mountains very much). it was cool.

that night, we spent the night in Dingle. It's a nice little town, lots of shops and restaurants. we had dinner at a great little seafood place (kim had steak, b/c of course she hates seafood) and did lots of shopping, although not much buying.



We looked for new wedding rings, but didn't find any here. the ones we did fine, though, were made in dingle. surprisingly enough :) In Dingle we also learned that we were going to have to take many pictures of ourselves by ourselves (i don't like to bother people. This is us by the bay where all the fishing boats come in. There's a dolphin who got lost and now lives in this bay and is really friendly. But we didn't see him.