Lorney drives the awesome rental Peugeot. If this car was available in the U.S. we'd totally buy it.
That's Bill and Gail's car. It's tiny, yet takes up most of the small road. Oncoming buses were kind of terrifying.
I kept taking pictures of the hills while we drove. I couldn't get over how green everything was.
We stopped at a pullout at the top of a corkscrew hill (narrow roads + hairpin turns + steep + tour buses coming at you!) and ate some lunch. Evie had her first bites of cheese (Irish cheddar) and loved it. Will was completely, totally passed out in the back seat.
We stopped at the Cliffs of Moher. It's a 1,000 foot drop into the Atlantic. Awesome.
It was cold and rainy, so Evie wore her gnome hat.
This is how Will kept warm - shirt + sweater + sweatshirt + knit hat + hood over hat + sweatshirt pulled up over his mouth.
When I came in 2002, there were no walls and no steps. Basically nothing preventing you from walking up to the edge and falling to your death. My friend and I were stupid enough to sit on the edge to get our pictures taken. The EU recently gave them a bunch of money to fix it up though, and you can no longer tempt fate for a neat picture.
The cows can do as they please, however.
That first picture at the cliffs was taken from the top of O'Brien's Tower, which was built in 1835. I'm pretty sure its restoration was part of the "make the cliffs less deathtrappy for tourists" money from the EU.
After the cliffs, we headed further south, across the Shannon river, to our cottage in Killarney.
On Thursday, we took a drive around the Dingle Peninsula and spent a little time in the village of Dingle. Dingle Peninsula just sort of dangles (dingles?) out in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is Inch Beach. It was funny, I stopped here on my backpacking tour with my friend in 2002, but I didn't really remember it until we drove by. As soon as I saw it I was all, "Holy crap, I've been there!" I had similar experiences throughout Ireland. "Hey, I totally ate here once." "Hey, that's the hostel where I drank too much."
This is one of the beehive huts. They've been there since the Iron Age. Seriously.
This is one of my favorite pictures, ever. Off to the left of Will is the Blasket Islands. The Rick Steves book told us that people lived on the islands until 1953, and then Ireland was all, "Dude, you can't live here anymore, your way of life is not sustainable." In earlier times, farmers would put their goods in a boat, row 30 minutes to the peninsula, then walk miles and miles to Dingle to sell everything. Nuts.
Will and some sheep.
Our kids need posing lessons. Perhaps we should send them to Barbizon.
Lorne and Will walking up to the Gallarus Oratory. It was built sometime between the 6th and 9th centuries. Monks used it as a chapel. The stones fit together so well that it's waterproof.
Will's Oratory dance.
Ruins of an old church from (I believe) the Middle Ages.
Lorne and highly annoyed Evie in Dingle.
Will was all, "Take my picture at this big door!" (The door to a church.)
The best thing about Dingle: it has the highest per capita ratio of bars to residents. Why? Because everything is a bar. There's a bookstore/bar. There's a music store/bar. But the best thing is the hardware store/bicycle store/bar, Foxy John's.
We went to a music shop and Gail got to play a bodhran, an Irish drum.
There's this dolphin that lives in Dingle Bay, Fungi. He's lived there for awhile, so he's all famous now. Will picked out a book about Fungi to take home with him, so we told him to get a picture with the Fungi statue. But he was totally skeptical. This is actually really close to the face he makes when we watch the dolphin show at Sea World. (Which he kind of hates - as soon as the people get in the water with the dolphins he starts shaking his head, making that face, and saying, "That isn't right." We don't go to the dolphin show anymore.)
We went to Killarney to find some dessert. We (unknowingly) went to Ireland's most expensive ice cream shop, Murphy's. But it was super yummy. Then we walked a little, then went back to our cottage.
Thatched roof! What what. The beige car is the Peugeot that we liked so much.
Will totally posed this picture. It's on the landing of the stairs in the cottage. He told Grandpa Bill where to put Evie, then climbed up and gave her his stuffed Thumper and sat next to her with Mr. Lion.
Then Lorne and I went to the local pub and had some beer, but we took no pictures of that.
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