Irish Adventures: Dingle and the Coast

Dingle, Dingle, Dingle. What a strange and frankly silly name for a place. It sticks though. I imagine myself ten years from now telling the story of my 6 months adventure and I know the name Dingle will come right back to me.

Though Harpreet and I didn't aim to spend our week doing a lot of driving, we ended up with a healthy bit of Irish road tripping. Our favorite stop over was on the road to Roscommon on the way from Dublin to Galway. We bought strawberries, carrots, some bread, and the most amazing Raspberry-Baileys jam made by an Irish grandmother called Francis. Yep, Raspberry-Baileys jam, divine.

Dingle Harbor is a little town which has been transformed, though not completely altered, from its old fishing past into a place for tourists and the Irish to come and eat delicious seafood, buy well made local arts (seriously), and enjoy some live music in a pub. It's not the most unspoiled place I've been too, but some great food, a fantastic cheese shop and the best sea-kayaking trip of my life redeem the town entirely. We'd figured it would be a bit overrun so I picked a B&B a little ways out of town in the village of Bailie na nGall, or Ballydavid in English. Im going with Ballydavid from now on, cause I can't even pronounce the Irish version correctly. The B&B came highly recommended by my favourite tool TripAdvisor (see my opinion on this in Travel Resources), famous for its jolly owner and scones.

We arrived in Dingle Harbor just in time for dinner. We lucked out and scored a table purely by chance at the best place in town, Out Of The Blue. Their white table wine was a Picpoul, big plus, and their food was the best meal of my entire trip. After a nice stopover to listen to lovely  music at O'Sullivans pub, we finally made our way out of Dingle at 10 at night to find our B&B. 

Driving out into the countryside of the Dingle Peninsula, we realized that neither our GPS not the directions really gave us much of idea of where this B&B was. After looking aimlessly for a pink house in the rather under populated area of Ballydavid, we stopped in the local pub and asked for help. Good thing we did. A kind man volunteered to show us the way and after weaving behind him down tiny one lane roads we finally arrived at our B&B to tea and tiny, delicious scones!

This was the most active part of the trip, I think because both Harpreet and I had spent the first few days catching up on much needed sleep. We rented bicycles, more in the style of my old friends Marcel and Hippolyte (i.e. big clunkers), and cycled around Slea Head. Our most adventurous came when we decided to shortcut our way back and ended up in a field full of hay. We went back to the main road and powered up a long and steep climb to be rewarded by a lovely descent into town going from fog to bright sunlight.

The next day we were even more adventurous and incredible fun. We sea kayaked out of Dingle Harbor into the sea on a glorious sunny day. We paddled into caves underneath the huge sandstone cliffs of Dingle. The caves where beautiful, the sides encrusted with muscles, barnacles and tiny jewel-like red and green sea anemones which opened up as soon as they went under the shifting water. The experience of passing into and through the caves, with the bright sunlight streaming through the entrances reflected on the wet walls, spying starfish in the waters below, the mix of unexpected colors, will remain a favorite moment in my life for a long time. It was magical being out on the ocean, so close to the water line, seeing the sea life up close. On our way back we spotted the dolphin that helped make Dingle famous - Fungi - splashing about in the opening of the harbor. (Sidebar on Fungi: we had heard there was a bottle-nosed dolphin that had made the Dingle Harbor his home for the past 28 years. Neither of us much believed it, but there he was a few 100 feet from us, splashing about.)

That afternoon Harpreet and I headed to our first step by to reality. We had one more night before our destination of Cork in the town of Killarney. We enjoyed ourselves but I'm not sure I recommend the town much - too many hen parties for my taste. The next day was our final drive into Cork, were this lovely Irish adventure came to a close.

Irish Adventures: Les lacs du connemara

In France there is this very famous, very cheesy (but French cheesy) singer that basically everyone has listened to and loved at one point. He has a song about the lakes of Connemara that my brother and I know by heart. It's a bit bizarre that a French ballad singer has a hit song about Connemara in Ireland, but trust me it's catchy in that old fashioned early 90s kind of way. Click here for  a link to a youtube video for your enjoyment.

The point here is that because of this song I've always wanted to see the Connemara. When my travel partner suggested Co Galway, location of the Connemara I got a little overexcited. Our aim was to be out in the country, staying at B&Bs (which are the best places to stay in Ireland) as much as possible. Ironically for Connemara I picked a hotel, though not our favorite, the Hotel Ardagh outside of Clifden still managed to feel very homey. Homey and home-made is something the Irish do well.

Connemara was magical. Travel exhaustion finally kicked in for both of us, and with ambitions to cycle around, we ended up passed out on a beautiful, empty, white-sanded beach. Laying out in the sun in Ireland is a rare and wonderful thing to do. The beaches, especially on the west coast are very wild. The blue of the water and the white of the sand make you think you could be in the Caribbean. Then you go into the water and freeze. That and the mooing of the cows munching on grass nearby remind you that you are not in the Gulf of Mexico.

The evening was spent enjoying a drink perched above the harbor in the lovely town of Roundstone, followed by a drive on the Sky Road to see the sun setting at 10:30 pm. We were sad to leave the next day, but the Dingle Peninsula awaited.

Irish adventures: The Giant's Causeway and a long drive well worth it

I just spent a week discovering the coastline of Ireland with a good friend. It was an unexpected detour in my trips, and one I'm glad I made. Ireland has always been a place I've wanted to visit but never a place that made it very high on my list of actual stopovers. Italian sunshine, English produce, French wines always seem to beat it out. Besides you run the risk of spending a week of vacation under a heavy, rainy Irish sky. Not the best way to relax. Well, I made it, and here is the first post on our adventures.

Giant's Causeway and scones

I should start by saying that we hit the global warming weather phenomenon of an amazingly spectacular week of sunshine. We saw the famous Irish fog once, and almost optionally since we could have turned right back into brilliant sunshine. Everyone we met, and we met a lot of people because the Irish are very friendly and flirty, was as stunned by the streak of cloudless, sunny, and hot days we were blessed with during our time.

I had been to Ireland once before as a very young college student. I'd seen Dublin, and had caught a tiny glimpse of the gorgeous countryside when I ventured south to stay in a B&B for a night. (This was also my very first solo traveling trip ever, twelve years ago. I did that math and ouch.) I knew from that trip that on a sunny day the Irish country side had the potential to be sublime, so we focused our planning on seeing as much of it as we could in a week and crossing our fingers. We booked and packed for rain, crossing our fingers for a bit of warmth, and have ended up wearing the same one light summery thing because its all we brought for 28C heat.

Despite a rough arrival - I pulled into our B&B at 2 am and Harpreet at 6 am due to the accident at SFO - we headed off as early as we could go to Northern Ireland (around 11 am after eating our weight in soda bread and scones at the Sandy Hills B&B) and see the Giant's Causeway. This is one of the top sights to see on the island, and though I hadn't thought about it much, it should have been packed with tourists. Turns out we decided to go up about a week before the rather controversial annual march by the Orange Order. It is one of these events that reminds everyone of Ireland's painful past and present conflicts, and as seen this year, in sporadic violent episodes. However, as a tourist, its brilliant. The March meant that tourists and locals alike were staying well away from Northern Ireland for at least a week, and we basically had the Giant's Causeway to ourselves.

We stopped for a bit to eat at the lovely, if a bit pricey, Bushmill's Inn in the town of Bushmills and I had a seafood platter delicious enough to make a Frenchman cry. Seriously. I think my father (said Frenchman) might have been in shock at how good it was. Espresso in Cornwall and 'fruits de mer' in Ireland - maybe the world is a better place? I digress and distract from the main point. After lunch we headed up to the Causeway with a goal in mind: to hike the whole thing.

As we would later figure out, we had a mini blessing in disguise, in that we had to abort that plan and could only walk half of it. I think the whole thing, or at least the main part, which runs from Carrick-a-Rede (or the Rope Bridge) to the actual Giant's Causeway is about 16 miles. We parked our car in a tiny little fishing harbor and walked 6 miles or so back towards the Giant's Causeway.

We essentially had the coast all to ourselves, with a perfect sunny day bleeding into a long late Northern European afternoon (sunset at 10:30 pm). The coast line on the Causeway is majestic, ancient, and truly one of the most beautiful sights I've seen on this trip. The setting sun (we didn't finish till 8 pm), the fluffy sheep dotting the landscape, the deep blue and green Atlantic, all of it only served to make the strange rock formations and talk cliffs of the Causeway Coast seem even more otherworldly.

The star of the Causeway Coast is the Giant's Causeway, a strange formation of basalt stone shaped into heptagonal pillars. The pillars line the cliffs for miles, but only at one spot do they extend into a low lying small spit into the crashing Atlantic. At this spot, they are human sized and you can walk all over them. I must have seen a million pictures of these neat rock formations in a thousand national geographic magazine spreads, but it really is special, and much more so in person. Go! (I think I should have a 'Must Go' section on this blog - the list is getting long).

We wrapped up our walk by flirting our way into the closing visitor center for a quick bite and a souvenir mug. We had about an hour walk back to the car along the road skirting the coast, before our three hour drive home to our adorable B&B in the town of Rush, north of Dublin (Sandy Hills B&B). Luckily for us, an adorable young woman from the visitor center picked us up about 10 minutes in and saved us from the hike back. We made it back to the car, in awe of the coastline and the friendliness of the people.

A long drive took us home. And we went to bed at 2 am, with plans to drive to Galway the next day. Below some pics from our Northern Irish interlude.

Prego, Prego

My good friend Nina and I try to plan a cycling trip every year. It's a good time for us to catch up as she lives in London and I don't. A good reason in and of itself of course. A better reason is that we both love our food, but to eat as we wish to we also need to burn some serious calories. Last year we did Provence because we both have a love of anything edible and Provençal, and we figured it was interesting landscape to cycle through. The only catch was that we managed to eat so much that we still put on weight, even with riding a bicycle for the better part of the day.

Clearly we had to ratchet up the physical activity a notch. This time Nina booked us into a proper road cycling week in Sardinia - an island not know for its light food or its flatness. Now, I have to admit that I left the planning up to Nina. She knows more about bikes then I do and she had very successfully found us our holiday in France last time. The bikes were clunky old things - nicknamed Marcel and Hypolite - and our average distance was 45 kms a day. Very, very manageable and once or twice a bit tiring. I thought that's what I was headed towards when I joined Nina in London for our 7 am EasyJet flight to Cagliari.

Our arrival in Cagliari was the moment in the story when I started to get a bit worried. In the back of the small van that came to pick us up were two very sexy road bikes, not two old clunkers. Now I've never ridden a road bike, they look painful, flimsy, and completely unsuited to crossing an entire island on Italian roads. Nina regularly rides road bikes and had been training for this trip for months. The most I've done is gone on a short hike with my mother about 2 months earlier, so yeah, I was not prepared.

Our five day trip took us from the mountains of the east coast, over the mountains in the middle to the mountains of the west coast. Somehow we made it up and over two mountain passes over a 1000 m in 5 days. I'm pretty proud of all these mountains, but then again I'm also still recuperating.

The southern part of the island is surprisingly unspoiled, though you do see the ravages of the economic crisis. We stayed in lovely little agri-tourismos each night which are essentially the Italian B&Bs. After cycling between 90 or 60 km, up and down mountains, I would devour the four courses of food we where served each evening. This kind of tourism isn't for picky eaters; you don't get a menu you are simply served what the (usually) lady of the house has prepared. Usually prosciutto, saucisson, cheese then pasta and only then the meat course. One hostess nearly panicked when we devoured the vegetables she served as starters and ignored the cured ham. We just hadn't seen vegetables since arriving. She came out of the kitchen with a worried look on her face but we put her fears to rest and ate most of the enormous lamb dish she served as mains (after the starters and pasta). My favorite town was probably the town of Laconi, located near the center of the island and home to a Saint (St. Ignacio di Laconi). 

We got very excited every time we caught a glimpse of the 'Sardinian Nona' - dressed all in black, head covered, usually heading into or out of a church and probably in her 90s. Sardinians take their Catholicism and their aging seriously. We stayed in the village of Villanovastrasailli, famous (or so its Welcome sign said) for being the village with longest male life expectancy in the world. Not a lot of dating prospects, though they may not have thought so as we were treated to a drink by the local men in the only bar open in town.

We finished our personal Giro Di Sardegna in a beach side town called Cala Gonone. It was quaint and though touristy not as spoiled as many other Mediterranean spots I've been too. After saying goodbye to Silvio and Gandolfini (we like to name our rides), our last meal, sitting by the side of the ocean, was divine (spaghetti with bottarga and clams, tomatoes with fresh fiure cheese, and a couple Aperol Spritz).

Here is the company we used (www.skedaddle.co.uk), I recommend them highly.