Each evening of the trip, I sat down with our map book and my iPad to figure out the route for the next day's driving. On our way from Kilkenny to Cashel, I learned the Google Maps part of this equation was going to be close to useless. All the speed limits in Ireland are outrageous - 80kph or even 100kph on tiny winding roads, which not even experienced Irish drivers would attempt - but Google doesn't know this, so it tells you the fastest route is to take the tiny yellow roads.
Guys: Never, ever take the tiny yellow roads. Avoid at all costs. Most of them don't even have names; the instructions just say, "Turn left (700 meters). Turn right (1.6 kilometers)." and so on. This means you have to pay attention every second and correctly deduce what is supposed to be a road, and you never have any idea whether or not you're on the right track. Also you have to go really slow because you could come around a curve or across a hill to discover a car is approaching from the opposite direction in your lane, since there is only one lane, but two-way traffic. Basically it's the worst. But we didn't understand this yet. and it took foreverrrr to get from Kilkenny to Cashel, all through patches of the tiny yellow roads.
After this experience, I only used Google to get the general idea, and then figured out an alternate route using major roads. This saved us so, so much time and stress.
Anyway, we did finally make it to the Rock of Cashel, the ruins of a fortress and church on top of a hill overlooking the countryside. The ruins there today date back to the 10th & 11th centuries, but there were kings there even before that.
This is the biggest building, the cathedral from the mid 1200s. With another older round tower as in Kilkenny.
There were a few tour groups here but one good thing about tour groups is that they tend to stick together, so for the most part if you wait them out they'll go on and you can have the place to yourself again. I was really worried planning this trip that we'd be too early in September and there would be too many people around; that week in Paris at Christmastime really scarred me for tourist overpopulation, I guess. There were very few people anywhere we went, though. It was very peaceful.
Here's Ben examining the Round Tower.
In retrospect this may have been our best weather day. Despite being high on a hill, the wind wasn't bad and it didn't rain on us at all.
The village of Cashel from up on the rock.
St. Patrick's Cross, from the 1200s. They have a replica outside but this is the real one, indoors to protect it from the elements.
We left Cashel and headed toward Dingle on the west coast. This was a longest driving day - it was supposed to be 3 hours from Cashel to Dingle but ended up being at least an hour more.
On the way there we passed a sign to alert us to an upcoming coffee shop, which then came up more quickly on our left than we expected. Ben braked hard to make the turn into the parking lot, forgetting about the near-uselessness of our terrible car, and it skidded out of control on the wet pavement. In those few seconds of helplessness I knew we wouldn't be killed, but I also had time to process what a huge pain in the ass it was going to be if we wrecked the stupid car - we had specifically declined the extra charge for no-deductible insurance coverage! - but at the last second the traction on the feeble tires kicked in, and we stopped about six feet from the wall. Right in front of this cute little place.
We went in and had Americanos and kept cracking up imagining what it would be like to be working in a cute bicycle-related coffee shop in the middle of the countryside when out of nowhere two tourists crashed their rental car into your place of business.
Refreshed and relieved to be safe & sound, we got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Dingle, a small town on a peninsula on the southwest coast. Our B&B had a lovely view of the water. This was our first real glimpse of the sea.
We went into Dingle to look around. It turned out to be another unbearably cute place. We ate a lot of that Murphy's ice cream while we were there.
They have a famous dolphin (Fungie) who has lived in Dingle Bay for decades now. He loves it when the tourist boats come out to see him - the boat operators don't charge you unless you see Fungie, but I guess you pretty much always see Fungie. We did not take a boat tour to go see him.
Dingle is a real fishing village too, in addition to being a tourist hotspot. We walked out on the pier and there were quite a few fisherman unloading their wares.
We ate dinner at John Benny's Pub, right there in the middle. It was a random pick but turned out to be a recommended place per our guidebooks, which we checked only later that night.
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