Fun With Fungi in Dingle

Boats of Dingle

After the craziness of driving through the Ring of Kerry, both Angie and I were ready for something a little more subdued.  We ended up going through Tralee even though there was a ferry there that would get us to Dingle quicker.  We figured with the car and two passengers we were looking at a lot of money to get across and needed to save money as the exchange rate was killing us.

The drive was fine, again there were very narrow roads, but compared to the Ring of Kerry, the lanes seemed like a football field.  The closer we got to Dingle, the more picturesque the scenery got.  This was the scenery that people associate with Ireland.  There were rolling green hills everywhere, it was so beautiful and even though I was stuck in a car, I kept snapping photos. 

Buses Suck!

About 20 minutes outside of Dingle we came upon an amazing lookout with green cliffs and beautiful blue water.  We had to pull over for a photos, it was just too lovely to pass up.  Even though it was freezing and windy, we both left our coats in the car as we were both tired of being bundled up.  It was definitely worth the chill in the end.

As we continued on, kept looking at our map and checking off the little towns we passed in my mind to make sure that we were still on course as it is easy to get lost in Ireland.  Everything was going smoothly, that is until the road on the map told us to go straight as it turned into another road.  Hmm, we soon came to an intersection where we could only go right or left, straight was not an option.  My vote was to the left, but on the map it looked as if the road veered to the right.  As before, there was no sign pointing us to Dingle, though there had been many for the past 10 miles; odd.  So, we decided to go to the right even though my instinct was left.

It turned out we were going downhill and further away from the water.  I pointed this out, but Angie figured it was right as the map appeared to go to the right, even if we wanted to turn around it would be hard on this road and we were suck behind a large white tour bus. 

After ten minutes, we came upon a sign at the end of the large hill.  There was a sign that pointed to the road that we had just come off of that said Dingle was behind us.  Lovely! Thwarted again!  Okay, so it was a pain, but we turned around and began the drive all the way back up.  At least we weren't behind a bus again.

After about 20 minutes, we got to Dingle which is a small fishing town.  After finding a B&B, we decided to check out the town.  There is an aquarium there that is pretty popular and day trips to the Basket Islands.  But it was too late in the day to see the Islands, but we were okay with that, so we decided to head over to where the ships were docked.

On our way there, we ran into a sign where that encouraged people to clean up after their dogs.  The funny thing was, I have never seen so much poo in my life, the threat of a fine didn't do anything to stop this phenomenon.  I loved the sign and did a few imitation of the dog mid business.  Immature; a little.  Funny, definitely!

Fungi

Further down the path, we ran into a statue of Fungi the Dolphin, Fungi the Dolphin has been in Dingle since 1984.  After losing his mate (dolphins usually mate for life), Fungi found his way to Dingle harbor and refused to leave.  Though Fungi is wild and refuses to eat food caught for him as gifts, he loves the fisherman of Dingle and appears everytime a boat appears and swims along side it and frolics alongside the boats.  There is a 45minute tour where you can see Fungi himself.  I was okay with not going on the tour and was happy enough taking a few photos with the brass statue.      

Dingle is a small but every pleasant town.  It didn't take a lot of time to walk around the whole thing but the views were very nice, especially along the water.  There also is a beautiful church close by where we were staying, but after exploring for a few hours, we were ready to eat.  One of the locals directed us over to an Italian restaurant that she enjoyed.  The prices in Dingle are a bit high for food, but we figured we could splurge a little and had some wine to go with out dinner.

Yum!

I think I freaked Angie out as I ordered the Squid Ink Pasta dish with shrimp and mussels.  When the dish arrived, the pasta was a dark blue that appears almost black in my photo.  Okay, so it wasn't the most appealing looking dish, but I knew what I was getting myself into.  I wanted to try the weirdest thing on the menu and well, I wasn't disappointed.  That is until I bit into one of the mussels and almost broke my back molar.  Angie heard the crunch all the way from across the table and asked if I was okay.  I pulled a white round item out of my mouth.  It looked like a baby pearl; apparently pearls are timeless.  My tooth sure wouldn't be.

After dinner, we had more liquor.  I am not a wine drinker as I am not a fan of the taste; that and I can get drunk off of two glasses, yet I can down, Vodka and Whiskey.  Very strange!  Walking home was interesting, to tell you the truth, I don't remember walking back to the B&B all that much.

I do remember waking up at 3AM because the yahoos in the room next to us were having a lovers quarrel.  They were loud and they weren't shutting up as apparently they were the only people who mattered in the house and were very drunk, or so I assume.  Eventually, after 45 minutes they stopped, but for some reason I kept thinking someone was in the room with us and kept looking in the mirror expecting to see a reflection of a ghost.  I started to freak out a bit and began questioning the choice to the drink wine.

The next morning at breakfast, we kept scanning the area for the offenders, but they never came down as they were probably sleeping off the booze.  The woman who ran the B&B wondered if we had heard the doorbell go off at 4AM that morning.  Apparently, a group of young drunk lads had thought that this was their B&B and were upset because their key wouldn't work.  Wrong house Einstein!  We told her we hadn't, but told her about the troubles in room #2.  She just shook her heads and told us she hoped we had hit the wall to shut them up.  

When you eat at B&BS in Ireland it is customary to acknowledge people when they enter the room and when they leave the room.  It was trippy for me because living in NYC you always look straight ahead and mind your own business.  It was nice to be back in civilization.  After breakfast, we thanked the hosts and were on our way.  We were ready to head out to Doolin to see the Cliffs of Moher.