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Our trip to the Dingle Peninsula, and Dromoland Castle, Ireland
April 20-30, 2015

Dromoland Castle:

The view from Cruach Marthain:

We often receive notes from strangers using our travelogues to plan their own trips. We welcome comments and questions. I put the travelogues up quickly, while the memories are still fresh, with little regard for grammar or punctuation, and I'm SURE there are many errors. If you find one, please let me know! If you find any broken links, please let me know that, too. The web page was developed in Mozilla FIREFOX; in a different browser it will not look as intended.

That said, I create these travelogues primarily to help US. They remind us what we did when, who we met, and what we would do differently next time. The personalization makes for some very, very long webpages. We came home with 1200 pictures from which 387 were chosen.

If you prefer smaller pages, here are links to daily pages (they are repeated at the end of each page as well). A new window will NOT open.

	Page 01: Mon - Prep and Travel to Shannon.
	Page 02: Tue - Drive to Dingle, Treehouse Cafe, Murphy's Pub.
	Page 03: Wed - Archaelogy Tour, Eilish @ JohnBenny's.
	Page 04: Thu - Inch Beach, An Canteen.
	Page 05: Fri - Shopping, An Canteen, Pool.
	Page 06: Sat - Dara, Dingle, Global Village, Foxy John's, Small Bridge
	Page 07: Sun - Cruach Mhartain, Louis Mulcahey Cafe.
	Page 08: Mon - Goat St. Cafe, Dunquin Pottery, An Canteen, Music at Courthouse.
	Page 09: Tue - Michelle, Sean's workshop, Goat St. Café, Blue Zone, Kennedy's
	Page 10: Wed - Drive to Dromoland, Hawk Walk, Dinner
	Page 11: Thu - Return Home
	Original, all-on-one-page version.

Press here to return to personal picture menu.

This was our ninth vacation in Dingle!

Disclaimers

MINUTIA
We have been coming to Ireland for so long that the minutia I used to record has become redundant and unnecessary. If you are a first-time visitor, I recommend you read the older blogs as they have information that will help make your trip more enjoyable. Starting this year, the blogs will be much shorter and will be primarily pictures. I no longer have time to add links and descriptions for every new thing we do. Therefore the 'disclaimer' no longer applies. The examples below will give you an idea of the type of information found in the older pages.

If you order "bacon" in Ireland you will get what Americans call "ham" or Canadian bacon, which comes from the loin (back) area of the pig, whereas traditional American bacon is made from pork belly and is called "streaky bacon" in Ireland

Another useful bit of information is that if you want half-and-half with your coffee, you must ask for "full cream" or you will get milk.

A NOTE ON THE MAPS
Most of the maps I post here were created using MapQuest, Google and Adobe Photoshop. I found that MapQuest had more detail, especially in the shoreline, than Google. But, neither MapQuest nor Google was detailed enough for our nature hikes so those maps I created by scanning the Ordnance Survey maps we use when we were hiking and then photoshopping the scanned images together. Please do not rely solely on my maps if you travel to this area!

BUY YOUR OWN Discovery Series Ordnance Survey Maps HERE

These maps are also available on Amazon.

This year we were travelling alone.

Pre-Travel Preparations

Almost two years ago, KC switched jobs and we moved our household halfway across the country, to southern New Hampshire. He no longer travels every week (thank goodness) so we don't have frequent flier miles and system upgrades to enable us to travel in business class. I was dreading the trip - crossing the Atlantic in coach was hard enough when I was young and tolerant of inconvenience - now, I thought, it would be unbearable. But, I was wrong!

We booked our seats on Aer Lingus which flies direct from Boston to Shannon and the flight is only 5.5 hours long! You can pay a little extra for premium seats, which we did, and we had plenty of leg room. We booked two aisle seats across from each other, so neither one would be stuck in the middle.

Every year, we try and visit one new part of Ireland. This year, we chose Dromoland Castle, outside Shannon, for three reasons: (1) we love castles, (2) Dromoland has a falconry program, and (3) we wanted to eliminate the midnight drive from the cottage to Shannon Airport. Dromoland is only 10 minutes away. The castle was offering a "Spring Madness" special where we got a Queen room, dinner, and breakfast for the same price as the room alone. I booked the castle for the 29th , and a Hawk Walk for 2:00pm that afternoon.

I contacted Brian at An Canteen, to make sure the restaurant would be open. I crave their calamari all year long. He assured me they were open, but they are closed Tuesday and Wednesday until the end of May. He promised to have calamari on the menu for Thursday, April 23.

Travel to Dingle

Monday, April 20

Our flight left at 7pm which gave me the whole day to finish packing, wash, dress, and tidy the house. I have NEVER been able to do this before!

We took all three suitcases again this year, because we couldn't fit everything into one bag, but the big one was half empty. NOTE TO SELF: We really need another medium size case.

I took my Baggallini A la Carte Bagg inside the Tumi Just-In-Case Tote because they work so well together for travelling. I brought two Acme ReUseIt bags for shopping in Dingle.

The location of our new house enables us to get the majority of our food from local biodynamic and/or organic produce, meat and dairy farms. As a result of the superior nutrition in our food, I was able to discontinue my morning smoothie and most of my supplements. Although I knew I wouldn't be getting the same quality food eating in restaurants, I figured I could tough it out for the 10 days we were gone. So, the only food items I brought along were snacks - chocolate, dried fruit, nuts, and US Wellness Meats extra-spicy beef sticks . That's probably why the big suitcase wasn't full.

Neither of us wanted to eat airline food, though, so I brought 2 egg-salad sandwiches for KC, and carrots and fruit for myself.

We were going to hire a limo to get us to the airport and back but, after doing the math, KC decided to drive.

KC and I were both recovering from the colds we picked up at Smuggs two weeks ago, and I woke up with a migraine for the seventh day in a row. Then, it poured all day long. This was not an auspicious start!

We left the house at 4:00pm. Traffic was not heavy but it was moving slowly due to the rain. We got to the airport at 5:00. KC dropped me and our bags at the terminal and parked the car. There was no one, literally no one, in line for check-in or security and we were through in minutes. Monday evening is definitely the right time to travel!

We had time to kill now, so we stopped at Vino Volo, a wine bar. Amazingly, they had a biodynamic/organic wine flight, which I enthusiastically ordered! KC had a white flight, and then a glass of Riesling. He was a bit peckish so we ordered the charcuterie plate and shared it. The wines came with cheat sheets you can write notes on and then take with you.

Vino Volo:

The flight boarded at 6:30. Paying for the upgraded seats got us priority boarding, and we had no trouble stowing our carry-ons. The plane was only half full so KC moved to the window seat next to me, on the left side of the plane. Right after take-off we watched a beautiful sunset OVER the clouds!

Sunset:

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OOAKFolk, Inc., and artist Barbara Healy are not affiliated in any way with the original manufacturers of the dolls pictured in this site. No photograph, text or graphic on this site may be copied without written permission from Barbara Healy. Copyright © 2004 OOAKFolk, Inc.
Last Revised: May 21, 2015
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