An Daingean (Part 1)

I spent this weekend in County Kerry on the Dingle Peninsula with my dad, who was visiting me for the weekend on his way to work in Tipperary starting on Monday. It was a pretty incredible experience. The tip of the Dingle Peninsula is the furthest west point on mainland Ireland and the islands just off the peninsula are the westernmost points in all of Europe. While the weather wasn't perfect, we didn't mind seeing it in the mist and occasional rain because a little finger of land jutting out into the ocean seems more natural if it is exposed to the elements in a rather harsh manner (or maybe that's just me).

We left Cork city on Saturday morning in a rented Nissan Note armed with a map or two, a hotel reservation, and a change of clothes. The drive was to theoretically take around 2.5 hours and take us through Killarney and a variety of small towns in Cork and Kerry (including my personal favorite, Inch). We stopped in Killarney for lunch, but ran into very little traffic and ended up being on the road for just about 3 hours. Even before we arrived in Dingle town itself the trip became pretty interesting in terms of sightseeing and general entertainment. Below is a rather narrow street in Killarney. At that point in the journey we thought that this sort of street was incredibly narrow. We later learned that by comparison, this street isn't bad.


From Killarney we continued on to Killorglin, where we turned north briefly until we ran into the R561, which we took west through Inch and eventually towards Dingle. We made a brief stop at Inch point to look at the beach and coastline extending beyond the point and out into the ocean mists and rain of the western coast of Ireland. After about 3 hours in the car we reached Dingle town just as it began to absolutely pour. We then got directions to our hotel, which was in Ballyferriter (Baile an Fheirtéaraigh), a small town a few miles outside the town of Dingle where the primary spoken language is Irish. After checking in (at around 4pm) our actual exploration of the peninsula began.


More to come on the Dingle visit, most likely tomorrow.
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Killarney + Pictures

Yesterday one of my housemates and I traveled to Killarney. Killarney is about an hour and a half bus journey northwest of Cork City a few kilometers past the county border between Kerry and Cork. The bus takes small, winding roads and we left at around 9:30 in the morning, so by the time we arrived in Killarney i was actually rather nauseous. The bus actually had seatbelts as well, a fact that surprised and initially sort of confused me coming from a land with seatbeltless busses. Fortunately, Killarney itself was a great place to visit and offset any lingering nausea in a few short minutes. After a brief walk from the bus station to the city center, we were greeted with the street in the picture to the left, followed by two busier and more main streets filled with all sorts of restaurants and assorted shops, including butchers, bakers, sports shops, betting places, and a bunch of gift shops (Killarney has been a tourist destination for hundreds of years).

After arriving in the downtown area (which consists of 2 major streets that basically form a big T) we got some food, which was cheaper than it would have been in Cork which could have been a result of practically every other shop along the two main streets being some sort of restaurant. There was a Subway and a Burger King as well, which didn't quite seem to fit in alongside O'Connor's Butcher Shop and O'Leary's Pub. After lunch we walked over to St. Mary's Cathedral, which was built in the 1800s and I believe it is the seat of the Diocese of Kerry. It is a functioning cathedral and there was actually a wedding finishing up as we went to check it out, so we didn't go inside.
Across the street from the entrance to the cathedral (directly behind where that picture was taken from) is an entrance to Killarney national park, an enormous plot of land owned by the Irish Government which contains the Lakes of Killarney, a few picturesque mountains, and the ruins of Ross Castle and Innisfallen Island, home to Innisfallen Abbey, one of the oldest monasteries in County Kerry. The park itself is gorgeous, and attempting to describe it is pretty much pointless, so here are some pictures:


The above pictures are of some of the fields near Killarney taken about a 5-10 minute walk from the cathedral.

This picture with mountains and Lough Leane in the background was taken from about halfway between St. Mary's Cathedral and Ross Castle.

This was taken from the base of Ross Castle looking out over Lough Leane.

All in all, it was a great trip. As a bonus, it didn't really start raining until we were boarding the bus to return to Cork. As we drove back, we could see from the bus window the same rolling hills with their peaks shrouded in low, wispy clouds. It looked really cool. It was a rather exhausting day, but completely worth it. The next travel goal is to head to a county not called Cork or Kerry and venture beyond the far southwest corner of the country. Read more