Monday, March 24, 2008

Irish Easter

Michelle had a 4 day weekend for Easter this week, so naturally we did what anyone would do, and went to Ireland. After a very long day of travel, Michelle and I finally arrived at our Hostel on the Dingle Peninsula, right on the edge of Ireland’s largest national park



The hostel was a really cool place, with very relaxing and beautiful views right outside of the window. While I think we were the only ones there who didn't have a car, the guy in charge was nice enough to drop us into town (about 2km away) and bring us back on almost any occasion.


Saturday, we got up early, and decided to test out our Dutch bike riding skills on some Irish landscape, and took the 20 km ride into Dingle town, the largest town on the peninsula at about 1500 people. It was a very cool place, both in temperature and in metaphorical sense.

A local shop keeper recommended a route for us to take, as we went on down the peninsula.
Here is a picture of him outside of his shop:

So Michelle and I continued on, stopping first at a beach for lunch


and then later for some photo ops, and to look at some sheep.

We eventually headed back to our small town of Annascaul, completely knackered from our 50km bike ride. So naturally, we decided to check out some of the town's 8 pubs (note, the town has a population of 350 people...I don't know the math on that, but I'm pretty sure that’s higher than almost any town's bar/person ratio...). The South Pole inn, with its pet dog was our starting point. It was the originally opened by 1900's South Pole explorer Tom Crean. We stopped next by the second pub pictured for a quick pint, and then on to Hanafin's to blend with the locals, listen to some live tunes, and drink a night cap.

The next morning, Easter, Michelle and I walked down to the small church for our first English service in since August.

We discovered in our time at Annascaul that Michelle is really becoming an "animal whisperer."


After we left, we spent some time in a proper Irish town...or at least a larger one; TraleƩ

And lastly, we took an interesting bus ride back to Shannon for an early morning flight on Monday. I have no idea how the bus made it on the road for over 30 minutes, but then again, I'm sure there are plenty of things out there I don't know...


Oh, and so much for the first day of spring... we were welcomed back with snow!

1 comment:

michelle said...

Chris, I think I'm sad about the picture with the dog and I. It looks like I'm yelling at her to do something or about to strike her. Sad...this completely doesn't represent the situation! Of course I do have a smile on my face, so maybe it looks I'm doing something nice (like playing fetch!) or even worse, maybe it looks like I enjoy being mean to the dog. I just don't know about the picture!! Oh well, at least there's a new comment on the blog now, heehee!