Allie in Spain (and Ireland): The South of Ireland

I am once again getting terribly behind on maintaining this blog. I've been so insanely busy the past few weeks. The last time I wrote I'd just gotten back from my trip to the west. The following weekend, June 24-26, we took another guided, group trip to the south of Ireland, which was also great craic (Irish for fun).

Although the west and the south are somewhat similar (it's all one tiny island, so it's not too different from place to place), going to the south was a really great experience. This was probably our longest journey of all, with the trip totaling about 5 hours to get the western most portion of the island - the Dingle peninsula. Yep that's right - it takes 5 hours to drive across the entire island. Let me remind you, the entire island is about the same size as South Carolina. We stayed the night in quiet little town called Annascaul in County Kerry. Really quiet. Urban population of about 271. We pretty much ran over the town and all the pubs that night. It was cute though and I like seeing all the little villages. The drive across the island was really pretty, as per usual.

The next morning, we hopped back on the bus and drove to Dingle, the main town on the Peninsula. This place is a bustling metropolis with a whopping population of 2,000. Whoa baby. Despite its modest size, Dingle is actually a very popular tourist destinations. One of it's most boasted sites is the now celebrity dolphin who lives in the harbor, Fungie. Fungie has a very interesting life story. He showed up in the harbor in 1984 and was named after the fisherman who discovered him. He now lives alone, rarely leaving the harbor even when other dolphin pods come by, which is very rare behavior for a dolphin as they are typically social animals. There are many theories as to why he has not left the harbor, some proposing that a female dolphin who washed up on shore around the same time he showed up was his mate and he has stayed there because dolphin's sometimes mate for life. So romantic. Whatever the reason for his residency in the Dingle harbor, the tourists pour in big time to see him and his antics. He loves playing with the boats when they come into the harbor and a siting is pretty much guaranteed. We ventured out into the harbor in the morning and it only took us about 10 minutes to locate Fungie. He spent the next hour swimming around our boat and just being a general dolphin tease. I think that's probably the closest I've ever seen a dolphin in the wild, so it was pretty cool. It would've been a lot better if it weren't freezing out, but I am in Ireland so what can I expect?

After our dolphin adventure, we had some time to walk around Dingle and explore a little bit. We stopped in a little cafe to get some breakfast/brunch and I decided to finally go for the full Irish breakfast. This is something that they say you have to try while you're here. It includes eggs, bacon, potatoes, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, and the infamous black and/or white pudding. If you don't know what the Irish pudding is, I'll let you look it up rather than explain it, but I wasn't too daunted because my host family in Spain served me the Spanish equivalent, murcillo, fairly frequently. I had already eaten it a few times before the explained to me what it was and by that point I actually really liked it. I thank my Cole genes for my ability to eat and enjoy pretty much whatever food I am presented with. After this, obviously still hungry and it being the perfect time of day for dessert, we headed over the the famous Murphy's ice cream shop. They had a really interesting variety of flavors and I ended up setting on a combination of Bailey's and Brown Bread. I know that Brown Bread ice cream sounds really weird but it was SO GOOD. Probably some of the best ice cream I've had. After completely stuffing ourselves, it was back on the bus for a tour of the peninsula.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the greatest day for a driving tour. There was a lot of fog and it was pretty cloudy so we couldn't see everything clearly, but it was still really beautiful. The whole drive took about 2 hours, and we stopped off at couple points. The first place we stopped was this amazing beach that I really can't describe, so please see the photos below. Even the photos don't do it justice. Our next stop was at a different beach, Inch Beach, but it was more typical to what you'd imagine at a beach without the whole sunshine thing, because after all, this is Ireland. There were surfboards for rent. These people are nuts. Fun fact: Inch Beach is where Coldplay filmed the music video for "Yellow."

Next stop was our lodging for the night in Killarney. Also in County Kerry, Killarny is a bigger town that's also a pretty common stop for tourists. Our hostel was in a great location right next to the city center and a huge park. That night, we went out for a pretty nice dinner and I had some amazing steamed mussels (isn't it awesome how even when I'm in Ireland, I still manage to talk excessively about food?). Then we went out to some pubs afterwards and we encountered some really great live music, which Killarney is known for. I do wish that we had had a bit more time to explore Killarney during the day, but the night life was a lot of fun and the great thing about these weekends is that we see so much.

The next morning, we left County Kerry and headed into County Cork to visit Cork City. Cork City, also known as the rebel city due to it being a center for anti-British rule movements in the early 20th century, claims itself to be the rival-capital of Dublin. Situated on the River Lee, it has a pretty similar lay-out to Dublin. Fortunately for us, the weather was fabulous on Sunday and we got to walk around a see a lot. One of my friends interns for the Restaurant Association of Ireland and she actually got us tickets to a Taste-Fest that was happening that day so we got to walk around and try lots of free samples of all the best foods in Cork, which was surprisingly quite a nice selection. We only had a couple hours in Cork, so after getting our taste-fest on we rushed back to the bus, only to find some bad news: it was broken down. We sat outside waiting to hear word on what was going to happen, which actually resulted in me getting, I kid you not, sunburned in Ireland. My life is such a joke. After realizing that the bus wasn't just going to magically repair itself, Caroline, our guide, called up a friend of hers in the area and had him come in his mini-bus and take us to Blarney, our next stop, so that we at least wouldn't get too behind schedule while waiting for the bus company to resolve our big-bus problem.

So the mini-bus took us to Blarney, which is only about 8km from Cork. It's famous for housing the Blarney Castle and of course the the Blarney Stone. People flock from all over to kiss the Blarney Stone, which is supposed to bestow upon you the gift of gab. The original castle dates to before 1200, but was rebuilt after a fire in 1446. The stone has a variety of stories behind it, and God only knows which one is really true. One legend states that the Celtic goddess Clíodhna told the builder of the castle, Cormac Laidir MacCarthy, to kiss the stone when he asked her for help with a lawsuit he was mixed up in. Another says that in the 16th century, Cormac Teige McCarthy, the Lord of Blarney, was being pestered by Queen Elizabeth I to make an oath of loyalty and give up possession of the land to the English crown. Unwilling to submit to her request, he simply sent her long eloquent letters of flattery without actually responding to anything she was saying. She described him as "giving her a lot of blarney," thus giving rise to the legend.

Despite the obvious hygiene issues associated with kissing the Blarney stone, I had to do it. Fortunately, the line wasn't too long and there weren't too many sickly looking people in front of us. So for those of you who don't know how this works, kissing the Blarney stone is a very awkward experience. The stone is on one of the outer walls of the castle, so the only way to reach it is by hanging over backwards from a ledge, 90 feet off the ground. There is an elderly gentlemen there who hangs onto you while you lean back, and there's a metal grate below in case he finally croaks and drops you (please pardon my crassness), because apparently too many people were falling and dying before they finally decided to install the grate. So, even with all the iminent danger, I kissed the stone and so now apparently I should have the gift of the gab for 7 years...I'm not really sure what that means for me. Now that I think about it, I wonder why I even bothered trying to obtain a talent which many might argue that I clearly already possess. Hm.

Anyway, after this we walked around the castle grounds for a bit which is quite pretty. There are some gardens, other structures etc. Typical medieval stuff. The weather was gorgeous and we had to wait for the bus to be fixed anyway so we enjoyed our time there. Once the bus had finally recovered, only about an hour behind schedule, we started to make our way back to Dublin. We took a route that was a littel bit out of the way so that we could pass through Limerick on our way back and see the River Shannon and King John's Castle. The River Shannon is the longest river in Ireland (like that's saying much) and it splits the Island in half. King John's castle was built in the 12th century after the Normans tooks over Ireland and drove the vikings out. Unfortunately, we hit a huge amount of traffic on our way to Limerick because there was some kind of festival going on. This resulted in us inching through stop-and-go traffic and our already wounded bus stalling in the middle of the road. Hilarity ensued. All 32 of us were asked to vacate the bus and, I kid you not, push it to the side of the road. When the driver said this I thought that he was joking, but on a 2 lane traffic jammed highway, we really didn't have a choice. The people behind us were not happy. So, we (and by "we" I mean other people while I watched) pushed the bus and fortunately it started up again. I didn't know that a large coach bus could actually be pushed by man power. Despite spending the rest of the day in fear that the bus would break down again, the rest of the trip went smoothly. We got to see the River and the castle and ended up getting back to Dublin a only couple hours late because of the bus and traffic. All in all, not too shabby.

As you can tell, this weekend was jam-packed, but I'm grateful that I got to see a lot of the Southern portion of the country. Next weekend we're headed up to the North, as in the U.K. part of the Ireland - Belfast, Derry and the Giant's Causeway. Updates to come! Here are some pictures from the south: