Day 6 - Killarney - Dingle

Today we were actually awaken by the sun.  The weather map said that we were in for a clear sunny day.  Kevin picked us up an declared that he had looked at the weather map and checked on everything and it looked like today was the day for Dingle.  We loaded up and headed to the Dingle Peninsula.  By the way, the jokes wrote themselves all day.  For example, our main goal was getting to the tip of Dingle.  Anyway, our first pull over provided these views.  It was simply stunning and every view made you realize why Ireland is called the emerald isle.

As we began driving to town, Kevin looked to the right and said, "I don't like the look of those clouds."  Indeed, we drove around the entire peninsula and got barely a view of anything but fog.  It was still a bit of an adventure as much of the road is one lane and since we couldn't see what was over the stone wall two feet from the side of the car, it was easy to imagine that if the car went over we would plunge forever.  We were caught several times by on coming traffic which brought everything to a standstill.  This was made more fun by the fact that there was a bus a few cars in front of us so we got to watch cars try to squeak by and not scrape the stone wall on one side or the mountain face on the other.  By the way, had we been able to see, we would have seen the island where the ending of the last Star Wars was filmed.  And we saw where they filmed the same scenery for the new one which they rebuilt on the mainland.  (Though the set had been removed.)

Kevin decided that we would go into town and have lunch and then, if the weather had improved we would go around again.  He gave us a recommendation for lunch but dropped us off at a pub which he said hadn't changed in a hundred years.

Lunch was typical pub fare and then we walked a bit and shopped.

As you can see from this picture, the weather never improved so we headed back over the mountain.

We got back to the hotel fairly early and decided to have a bit of a rest.  We met at 6:20 to walk down the street for dinner.  The town was hopping and there was a Scotsman playing bagpipes by the old church which seemed about right.  Dinner was relatively typical fare but we managed to none of us eat potatoes which is quite an accomplishment.  For instance, my lunch consisted of shepherd's pie with french fries.

It was only about 8:30 when we finished dinner so we had some ice cream at a local shop (Irish coffee and brown bread flavor for me) and Rebecca lead us to the Killarney national park which is right on the edge of the town.  I've included a lot of pictures because the place is magnificent and huge and deer were everywhere.

I'm guessing we walked three or four miles back to our modest lodgings.

Despite poor visibility it was still a pretty great day.  Kevin's home team for Celtic football won their quarter finals match last night so he ought to be in a good mood, but then again he always seems to be in a good mood.