Dingle, Killarney, Blarney Castle and Dublin – 2nd and 3rd September 2017

Slainte’ for the last time from Dublin

After leaving Annascaul, we headed towards county Kerry and the city of Dingle for lunch. Our drive today was along the beautiful Slea Head peninsula. Our first stop was at a farm where we could pat baby lambs and look at the old beehive stone forts – for the princely sum of tree euros. The lambs were mad cute and the girls all turned into cooing softies as soon as they saw them. The stone forts and beehive houses were cool and the farmer had turned one of these into his own personal fish smoke-house. Very cool.

Anyway we stopped at this beautiful headland for a pic before we hit the town of Dingle for lunch. Rory told us that the latest Star Wars was filmed on the islands that we could see out to sea. Dingle has a permanent population of around 2000 people and for these 2000 people there are about 52 pubs!!! I shit you not! The reason that there is so many for so few is because of me, and you. Yep – tourists! Apparently, 1.2 million people come through Dingle in the touro season and the pubs make a killing. We walked around this quaint little fishing town before we grabbed some tucker from a well-stocked supermarket and Jen smashed a toffee caramel Murphy’s ice cream. The sun was out and this was a picture-perfect day to hang out in Dingle – just a couple of little Dingleberries!!

We had organised with Ruairi (Rory) for an upgrade tonight into the bnb as we needed a night off the bunks, so we were pretty excited to get to Killarney.

We arrived in the afternoon and straight away we jumped onto the back of a jaunting car for our horse and carriage ride. Killarney has the largest national park in all of Ireland – about 26,000 acres – and we spent an hour jaunting through the many paths. Our driver John was all about de craic and the banter between him and the other drivers that we passed was almost as good as the scenery. As we passed one of the drivers, John said:

“Dis man here is Paddy and he’s lookin’ for a wife…any man’s wife’ll do.”

An oldie but a goodie!

We returned after an hour and checked out the funkadelic main street of Killarney that was full of different coloured shop fronts that sold whisky, woollen stuff from the Aran isles, tour shops, pubs, churches, souvenir shops etc… very cool.

Ruairi then drove us back to the bnb and we re-packed the suitcase before heading over the road to a nice pub called Kaynes. We decided to have a slow, relaxing graze and I tried Red Deer 12 year old whisky as a chaser to my Guinness. Jen had an Argentinian Malbec – which she has grown to like. We started off with duck three ways (pate, sliced and dumpling) and a chicken and shitake spring roll before we shared a pork cutlet with maple syrup sweet potato chips, pickled red onion and spiced apple puree…we hung here for a few hours before we crashed out in the big bed…life was grand for a few hours.

Because I was a) tired, b) a wee bit pished, and c) had a blocked nose from the A/C on the bus, I may have snored. The absolute psychotic lunatic that had the room above us apparently didn’t appreciate my snoring and bashed his floor so loudly that it woke Jen up. He repeated this every time I dozed back off – about 25 fucking times!!! Skit up mate!! I finally felt so paranoid and bad that I woke up around 3 or 4 and couldn’t really get back to sleep for the rest of the night. 80 euros well spent on the hotel room…surely he could have made emergency earplugs from dunny paper – as I’ve done on more than one occasion when snorers have woken me!!…

Anyway, we had a full Irish breakfast complete with black and white pudding before we jumped on the bus for our last day together.

Our first stop was the world famous Blarney Castle. I had every intention of kissing the stone but there was an hour wait in the line and I didn’t fancy listening to Bob and Nancy from Michigan talk about their grandchildren, so we spent an hour checking out the Poison Garden and the Fernery. The number of Australian tree ferns there was incredible and we had a very lovely time. I also hugged the branch of a HUUUGE Western Red Cedar and felt pretty happy.

After some lunch, we jumped back on Shrek 2 and headed for the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. I sat up in the jump seat for this leg of the trip and Ruairi and I talked film and music for 2 hours – great craic.

We then hit the Guinness Storehouse – headed for the Skybar and had a few pints of the black stuff and a G & T – which is Jen’s new fave. We didn’t check out the beer making process, as I’m pretty familiar with that, but just sat and people watched for a very pleasant hour.

And…that was it. Ruairi dropped us back to Paddy’s Palace and I jumped on the mic on the bus and thanked him on behalf of everyone. He is an utter champion and I invited him to come stay with us if he’s ever in Oz.

We arranged to meet half the tour at the Stag’s Head pub where we also organised to meet Nicola’s sisters. Nic is a friend of ours from home who hails from Dublin. Anyway we met her super rockin’ twin sisters Justine and Antoinette and their cool partners John and David. Emily, Jaz, Nick and Lauren were also with us and we hung for a few hours and watched the start of the “diddly” downstairs. The band was crackin’ but after a few songs our bus buddies said goodbye and we all hugged and promised to meet up again someday. They were a good crew to hang with for a week and I miss them already L

Anyway, we did a mini pub crawl in the rain with our 4 new local friends and had an absolute belter of a night. I love Dubliners: their accent, their worldview and the craic – so good. These four people were so much fun and fantastic hosts.

And now here we are…

Hungover at Dublin airport as Galway and Waterford battle out the GAA final and the entire airport is glued to one TV set. I’m going for Galway, but I don’t really care who wins.

We have seriously loved every minute spent in Eire. We’ve learnt loads about the troubles and the points of view of the Unionists and the Loyalists. I’ve sampled the best Guinness, whiskey and pasture fed produce. We’ve loved the lush and rugged landscape of the West Country, the music and the various accents around the island, but it’s the people that really made this trip for me. Our new family on the bus were superstars and the people that looked after us – both staff and the general public – were so friendly and charming…yes charming is the world that I am searching for.

Ireland has charmed me…and I will be back one day, for I am now addicted to craic.

We now fly to London for one night before we do our final leg in San Francisco and Santa Cruz.

Ciao for now – talk later in Trumpnation!!

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