Allison's Wonderland

Woke up this morning in our little Invicta Haven. Sean made us a scrumptious breakfast. I asked him what the black & white pudding was made out of and after hearing the answer I never want to see the stuff again! He said it is pork mixed with oats and pig’s blood. Barf! No wonder I didn’t like it. What girl in her right mind likes to eat blood besides a vampire?

Anyway, enough of the drama, on to our day! We started out at the Gap of Dunloe. Can I just say BEAU. TI. FUL?!? It was a little rainy and yuck out, but the Gap of Dunloe is right between two hills/mountains with a lake and a beautiful stream in between. We took a thousand pics there. The road we had to drive up was curvy and there were hikers everywhere. I started to get a little sick from my own driving! Worst. On our way to the Ring of Kerry (One of the most coveted drives in all of Ireland) we started singing songs from the Sound of Music. I don’t know what it was about this trip. Maybe all the hills and being outdoors in God’s beauty, but “The Hills are Alive” ended up being our theme song. We then started singing, “ I Must’ve Done Something Good” from Sound of Music and all three of us started tearing up. Micah got it on video and we all look like a bunch of idiots, but it’s hilarious.

The Ring of Kerry was beautiful. We stopped at almost every overlook we could because it was breathtaking. We stopped at this one little beach where the sun decided to show its face. As you can tell in the picture, we were pretty stoked. We were able to take off our jackets, play and run around. I also had to pee there and of course Micah had to take a picture of me doing so. After relieving myself we kept driving and came across the two Skellig islands. We weren’t able to actually go to the islands, but taking pictures from far away was just as gorgeous. They look like two little drops of cookie dough covered with greenery. We drove through Caherdaniel, and then we stopped at Waterville to kinda eat, but we didn’t actually eat. The wind was a little brutal today, but we made the best of it. We stopped at this souvenir store in Waterville and I found the coolest pins. This was also a place that Charlie Chaplain visited and I got my picture with him.  We ended up eating at this restaurant in Cahersiveen called The Ferthathat was sort of odd and looked like it came out of a weird ghost town like movie. We each got something to warm up our stomachs since today was a tid bit nipply! After our weird lunch where Shaun ate octopus skin in his soup we headed to this place called Ballycarbery Castle I LOVED THIS CASTLE It was sort of in the middle of a neighborhood, but that’s what made it so interesting. The castle had a long family history and when


Micah started reading the history from our Lonely Planet Ireland book, she said it was a the home of the cup bearer for Queen Elizabeth Eye...EYE?!? Shaun and I went to pieces laughing because in the Lonely Planet Book it says, Queen Elizabeth I, and Micah pronounced it “eye” instead of “the first”. Hilarious! We took pictures and ran around and acted all weird. What’s new? Micah and Shaun made me drive fast so that we could get to Killorglin Library before it closed at five in order to use their free internet access. Micah and her facebook…worst. Made our way back to the Invicta and crashed awhile before getting some food at the Danny Man Pub in Killarney. When we got there, a beautiful rainbow made itself appear over the buildings. Tried to get a picture with it, but they didn’t turn out too well. Danny Man had live music which was pretty cool. So Micah starts filming Shaun and I as we eat and just making a little video for posterity. I look over and this really ugly, mean looking Irish woman is flicking off the camera. I’m just like WHAT? So I tell Micah who originally didn’t notice and sure enough ugly lady is flicking us off for no apparent reason. RUDE!!! I was a little mad. Afterwards we went back to the Invicta and crashed. I could not even keep my eyes open long enough to journal!


The next day was Dingle Day! I loved Dingle Drive. I don't think I've seen anything more beautiful! Well maybe. Between Hawaii, Alaska, and Dingle, I don't know which is prettier. Sean was nice and left out the black and white pudding at this morning's breakfast. I guess he got the hint. Sorry Sean! We packed up our bags, said our Goodbyes to the Invicta and went on our way. Our first stop was Inch Beach. This place was gorgeous. What isn't in Ireland? But seriously just beautiful. We took a bunch of pictures acting stupid and climbing on each other's backs. Shaun tried to flip me on his back but he ended up just really hurting my arms. I felt like he almost pulled them right out of socket. What a weiner. We were actually able to walk on the Dunes in Inch, unlike the States where everything is regulated to death and you can't walk or do anything on the Dunes. We got some cool souvenirs from Inch. Such a cute name too. Moving on to the next wonderful place in Dingle, random field that looked Irish...so we decided to take pics. I couldn’t have gone to Ireland with two better people considering the fact that we are all completely and utterly obsessed with pictures. I think it might be a character flaw. Or we’re just really weird. It could definitely be both. Anyways, we finally made it to the town of Dingle, which is the most precious thing you’ve ever seen. This is the town that Deckland was supposedly from in the movie “Leap Year”. We got our picture with the town dolphin statue. His name is Fungie. We didn’t actually have time to go on a boat tour and see him in person but it was fun to ride him in the town square. Shaun and I are idiots. What can we say?

After our picture taking we set out to explore the Dingle Peninsula, but that’s about when are stomachs started growling. All we did on this trip was take pictures and eat. We ate at this place called StoneHouse Restaurant. Ironically it was a stone house. Go figure. They had two cute little dogs there that Shaun was obsessed with. Right next door were some Irish Famine houses that remained in tacked from the 1800’s Irish Potato Famine. This is where the second flick off occurs. There was a little kiosk next to the house that we didn’t end up seeing, but once we got up there it said that they were charging two Euros to go in. Well we took pics from the outside and really didn’t care to go in, so as a collective group we decided not to go. That’s when the kiosk attendant decided to flick us off. Rude. I was really annoyed at that for sure. We had a scrumptious lunch, and I ended up getting Irish coffee to warm up my bones. For some reason I wasn’t aware that Irish coffee contained Irish Whiskey and Wowzer was it strong. I drank it all right down though. Whoopsy.  The Dingle drive was seriously spectacular. I would’ve loved to spend more time here because I could not stop taking pictures of the rocky green cliffs and the sun was out meaning we got to take our jackets off!

We stopped at almost every overlook we saw, and the last beach that we stopped at we stayed for over an hour. The weather was perfect. I just laid in the grass at one point in time just soaking up the sun and enjoying God’s creation. I always feel the closest to God whenever I’m outside enjoying the works of art he created. Micah and I made a video and danced on the beach like crazy people. We knew we were getting the looks and were thought of as the stupid crazy Americans, but whatever. We enjoyed ourselves. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our beloved Dingle and we had to take the 6 hour drive to Dublin. Not cool.  But Shaun and I kept ourselves preoccupied with singing and telling stories of Greedy McGloughlin while Micah slept in the back. We saw two rainbows on our way back to Skerries. Skerries. S-Kay-Eh-ARGH-ARGH-EYE-Eh-ESS. SKERRIES. Ha! And also we were victims of a cow crossing just like in Leap Year. We got into our last Bed and Breakfast at around 8:00 and we were starving.

The nice Hostess lady gave us the name of the pub, Man-O-War Pub, and called ahead to tell them we were coming since everywhere in Ireland stops serving food at 9:00pm. Shaun and I had a fight over Ketchup. Kinda funny. Like really funny. It was weird because when we first walked into the Pub side it was all these scary looking men. Kind of like in the movie Tangled where they go to the Ugly Duckling pub and all the Vikings were in there. Pretty similar actually. Then the bar tender informed us that the restaurant was on the other side. We fit in a lot better on that side. HA! We all crashed that night and were ready to get on the Aer Lingus plane for home. GOODBYE IRELAND! You have been wonderful to these three little visitors!! It was sad to leave, but I think all of us were ready for a taste of home. We stayed two nights with Laura and Chris when we got back, and they took us to see some of the New York sites. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the Pier. The weather was crappy but we were use to it being in Ireland. In the evening they took us to an authentic Arab place of which I’ve never been before. The food was good, but the service was a little crappy. It took us two hours to eat. YIKES! Anyway, that was our Ireland trip in the smallest nutshell I could muster up without leaving too many important things out! Hope you enjoyed and if you read this whole thing, MORE POWER TO YOU! Till the next trip…BERMUDA HERE I COME!