Dingle and Dublin
I’m going to try and catch up a bit on our news and travels since we’re about to embark on another trip. The more posts that I have waiting, the more I’ll procrastinate.
Lauren came back to see us at the end of October, and we did a day trip out to Dingle, in the far west of County Kerry. It was about a 2 and a half hour drive, and we stopped in Killarney on the way. Lauren and I sang Christmas in Killarney, since Chris had never heard it.
Anyway. After some very tiny twisty roads, we got to Dingle. There’s an aquarium there, complete with a pirate statue and a tank of Nemo-themed fish. There are some photos on Chris’ Facebook here. We had a pretty fantastic time there although the aquarium was a little smaller than we expected. Then we fought the crazy wind and walked along the harbour wall for a while. There are pictures of that part here.
For Halloween, we headed over to Dublin for a night. We took the bus, which was much less fun than the train. But there was construction on the train line and we would have had to take the bus partway anyway. We went to the Guinness Storehouse (photos here) and spent quite a bit of time wandering through there. I especially liked the 360 degree view of Dublin from the bar at on the seventh floor. It was dark by the time we got up there, and we saw fireworks all over the place. Apparently Halloween is a firework-worthy holiday in Ireland.
We (okay, maybe just I) didn’t feel like actually dressing up for Halloween, so we took an observer’s position on this Halloween. After we got back from Guinness (and dried off from the pouring rain), we went down to a pub just outside our hotel and just watched. It was honestly probably the best Halloween I’ve had in several years. Besides the interesting social commentary that comes from observing Halloween in a bar, we saw five guys dressed as a caterpillar.
Chris went to bed early with a headache, and Lauren and I stayed up much too late drinking wine and talking. She left for Dubai (via London) early the next morning, and Chris and I headed home on the bus.
Next up, France!
