We had another peninsula drive (the third peninsula in a row) for our fourth day in Ireland. This time it was the Slea Head drive, a relatively short excursion on the Dingle peninsula. We did it backwards which, on one hand, was nice because we didn’t get stuck behind cars and tour buses, but on the other hand, all the signs were pointing the opposite direction so we missed a few things we would have liked to have seen.
As far as actual views, I’d say Slea Head offered my favorites. There was a lot of green.
And several beautiful beaches.
Ocean views galore.
And we walked up this hill that had gorgeous views all around. First there was the beach and its neighboring cove with mountains in the background.
And the Blasket Islands on one side.
And these gorgeous sloped cliffs on the others (side note: If you notice the trailers on the nearest cliff, that is where Star Wars is currently filming for the next movie. The road up to it is a temporary metal one that was built just for their filming).
One of the main attractions on the drive is the Bee Hive huts, but we had already seen similar huts on Skellig Michael, and these ones looked awfully busy and charged a fee, so we drove on.
We ended up back in Dingle town in time for lunch which was delicious and involved no fires this time around. Afterward, we explored the town a bit more, getting off the main street, and found ourselves at the pub Dick Mack’s.
This place was something else. When you first walk in, it’s a relatively small room with the main bar taking up half of it, and a working leather shop on the other. Then you go through a maze of rooms, all full of character. My favorite was the room with the fireplace.
They had a second bar in the back that wasn’t being worked at the time, but led me to believe the place gets pretty packed in the evenings.
Out back was a nice patio area, so that’s where we went to enjoy our Guinness. A very drunk, very old man was out there shouting slurred, unintelligible gibberish to some other man. Everyone stared for a bit trying to figure out if this was a friendly encounter or confrontational, but the other man laughed and came up to his table, so all was well.
That night, we decided to head back to the hill with the gorgeous views for the sunset. We got there around 9:30 and hung out until closer til 10, when the sun finally disappeared. Kansas has its own brand of beautiful sunsets, since you can see for such a long ways, but there’s nothing like seeing the sun dip behind the water, casting beautiful pink and purple hues over it.
The next day, we decided to take it easy, so we slept in for the first time all trip, made breakfast, read our books, and just relaxed. We went back into town for lunch and decided to try and see Fungie the dolphin.
Fungie has been Dingle’s resident dolphin for over 30 years. He lives out in the bay, and no one really knows why he hasn’t left, but he does indeed seem to be happy there. They have built quite the tourism industry around him, taking boats out constantly for tourists to see him. We didn’t feel like paying money and sitting on a boat, though, so we took a walk out to the lighthouse. We sat there, watching as tourist boats came and went one after the other, and Fungie made tiny little appearances here and there, just coming up enough to breathe. After a while, he got playful and decided to swim between two of the boats as they took off down the bay. We could hear the people on board cheering every time he leaped up over the water. We followed along on the shore and finished the walk back.
After that, we stopped for some ice cream (I have noticed there are ice cream shops everywhere in Ireland), and went back home to hang out the rest of the evening.