By Saturday morning the storm had mostly passed, but it was still windy and chilly (upper 40’s) with occasional rain showers. Saturday was taken up with grocery shopping at Dingle’s SuperValu and with arranging the house: unpacking and setting up the requisite computer and charging stations.
Then it was Elaine’s treat for lunch at Sheehy’s Anchor Down restaurant. We know one of the Sheehy’s, fishermen all who sell at the restaurant what they catch from their boat. Elaine had monk fish medallions and I had mackerel and calamari salad. It was all good! Next it was also a stop at the Dingle Pub to say hello to Tom Geaney and enjoy that first (for this trip) pint of Guinness. Dinner was at home – delicious fresh caught monk fish (double monk fish day for Elaine!) and sauteed spinach. My gimlet was with double distilled Dingle Vodka. Yum on the food and drink. After dinner we went into town for some dessert beverages and traditional Irish music at O’Flaherty’s.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
“Ride Dingle” was on Sunday. Postponed from Saturday because of Friday night’s storm, it’s a bicycle ride from Dingle around Slea Head Drive, then back through Dingle to cross over Conor Pass and eventually return to Dingle again for the finish. We watched and chatted with Dingle Garda officers Hurley and Murphy.
While in town I made reservations for tonight (Sunday) at Out of the Blue, a Dingle mainstay that we have never visited before. Seafood only – meat lovers not welcome. And I bought tickets for a concert Monday night at the little St. Jame’s Church (Church of Ireland – Episcopal).
Dinner was grand as you can tell from the pictures. I had oysters followed by char grilled plaice and sea bass while Elaine enjoyed flash fried squid with chillies and garlic followed by pollock in a potato crust.
After dinner it was off to the Dingle Pub to listen to Richie O’Brien & Dreams of Freedom and to see David Geaney dancing. And we chatted with a nice couple that we had met in the afternoon in the bookstore while I was buying the concert tickets.
We got our car Thursday morning, delivered to us as the
hotel at 9:30 AM. It’s a black 2019
Peugeot 3008. Picture forthcoming in the
next day or so. Her name is Winnie. That’s Winnie the Peugeot. If you don’t get the joke, then you don’t.
The drive from Heathrow to Bangor in North Wales took a little over four hours. It rained off and on the whole way. Poor Winnie is dirty already. She’ll get a wash in Dingle. There were no plans for Bangor other than over-nighting. But we were in the hotel by 3 PM. So we went for a short drive and a walk. Bangor is most famous for its Menai Suspension Bridge. Down below it we walked the Belgian Promenade to Church Island with its cemetery. And at the end we had a beer at the Angelsey Arms Pub. It was a pleasant visit to nice town.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
Friday
Up early on Friday and on to Dingle. Quick 30 minute ride to Holyhead and onto Irish Ferries for the 3½ hour crossing. A bit bumpy but but not bad. Arrived in Dublin at 11:45 AM on time. Then a 4½ drive to Dingle. 30 minute dead stop near Limerick for an accident. Then we arrived in Dingle at 5:45 just in time to hunker down for Storm Hannah. 60 mph winds with gusts to 100 and lashing ran. We were tucked into our house and survived the storm with wine and food. The house is GORGEOUS!
So, . . . a far more adventurous and fun day in Las Vegas on Tuesday than we expected and an eventful (in a good way) flight from LAS to LHR. All in all, it was quite a Tuesday.
We had breakfast at the hotel buffet – usual Residence Inn stuff. And I checked in for our Virgin Atlantic flight which leaves at 7:30 tonight. They offered an upgrade from Premium Economy to Upper Class for $1,400 each. We seriously considered it but decided against it. That’s a lot of money for a lie flat bed and a better meal.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures.
At 8:30 we took the interstate from the hotel to the downtown Las Vegas area to visit the Neon Museum. It’s a graveyard of old Las Vegas neon signs. It was actually quite an interesting way to spend 45 minutes. That’s about all the time you spend there.
No Room at the Inn?
Fast Eddie Felsen?
Elaine & the Ugly Duckling
On leaving we headed a few blocks closer to downtown and visited the Mob Museum. Housed in the one time federal courthouse and post office, it’s four floors of memorabilia and history of the mob, prohibition, smuggling, murder, and the Kefauver Senate hearings into organized crime that all got rolling after the Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. (The actual brick wall where the mobsters were killed in that event has been moved and reinstalled in the museum.) It was good to see that our old Boston friend Whitey Bulger is well documented here in Las Vegas. We spent about three hours and enjoyed it a lot. Very well done.
Seven Died Here
Happy in the Electric Chair?
And Not So Happy
Whitey
Who Remembers Kefauver Hearings on TV?
One of the Kefauver Hearing Rooms
Then we walked around Fremont Street and Binion’s Downtown Casino. This area is a magnet for street performers, con artists, sleaze balls, pan handlers, and other disreputable weirdos. It’s something that has to be seen with even zip lines overhead. But it was nice to get back to the car and out of the area. Not many pictures because I didn’t feel particularly safe with my camera out. One video though.
A Glimpse into our Future?
After lunch at Chipolte we still had a couple of hours to kill before heading to the airport. So we took a drive the full length of Las Vegas Boulevard. We drove past all the wedding chapels, gift shops, old casinos, new casinos, and the whole “Strip”. We continued on past the Airport, past South Point, an outlier casino where we used to stay, and past even the “M” Resort which in a beautiful place on the outskirts. We continued on on what was now just one lane in each direction. We passed a heliport and the Las Vegas Motor Speedway where you can drive a fancy sports car around a big track (at quite a cost, I expect). We demurred. We continued on and finally came to quite a site! The Seven Magic Mountains. All of a sudden it’s just there in the middle of nowhere. Pretty amazing. It’s probably best described as a psychedelic Stonehenge in the desert. Next time you’re in Vegas, drive out and see it. It’s probably 20 miles out Las Vegas Blvd from downtown. An unexpected find!
Finally to the Airport! We dropped the car and went to check in for our Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow. We had a great VA agent. I asked about upgrades and said $1,400 was a bit steep for us. She talked to her manager and offered us the upgrade for $1,100. We decided to splurge and do it! That got us into VA’s club room pre-boarding – nice! And we got to board first. The seats are wonderful with built in hassocks so you can sit with your feet up and fully extended for the whole ride. And at bed time, they recline into lie flat beds with a comfortable pillow. The bed was even long enough for me! I actually slept for four of the nine hours of the flight. The food and drink were excellent too. And, especially nice, they gave fast path immigration privileges, so we were through UK immigration in five minutes instead of ninety minutes minimum. As we exited immigration, our bags were just coming onto the carousal and we were out of Heathrow in like fifteen minutes total. That’s a world’s record.
Now we are at the London Heathrow Marriott enjoying the club lounge. Free food, free drinks, free breakfast tomorrow. At 9:30 tomorrow (Thursday), Peugeot will deliver our new 3008 SUV and we will be off. Thursday night will be in Bangor, North Wales. Early Friday morning we get the ferry from Holyhead (Wales) to Dublin and will immediately drive on to Dingle. Expected ETA: Friday at 5:00 PM. Next post: maybe from Bangor tomorrow night but most likely from Dingle on Saturday.
No pictures today. But the adventure has begun. I picked up a rental car at the airport this morning (two hour line!!) and we were off to Las Vegas just after noon. It was an uneventful drive with some rain showers thrown in. We were at the Marriott Residence Inn near the airport by 5:00. It’s a nice new property with friendly staff.
We brought cocktails with us and enjoyed them in the room. Then we went out to Town Square, a new shopping/dining/entertainment complex just a mile from the hotel. We had dinner at the Yard House. Great calamari starter followed by lamb burgers with fries, all with a bottle of Pinot Noir. Good first meal.
Then a good night’s sleep. On Tuesday we will poke around Las Vegas and then fly out non-stop to London Heathrow at 7:30 PM. More on the day in Vegas and the flight from London where we will stay overnight at the airport on Wednesday night. Stay tuned.
Trip over. Time for the dreaded plane rides home. We are at Dublin Airport for the night, once again in the Ducati Suite. Sweet. Tomorrow morning at 8:45 we fly to Heathrow, then change terminals and planes for the 11 hour flight to PHX. We’ll be home by 8 PM, asleep by 8:10 PM.
The guy working on the wall at Murphy’s (in yesterdays photos) has been in exactly the same spot for 15 years. Progress is slow.
For those not seeing pictures, press “Blog Home” under the title. That should bring you to the current home page complete with pictures. They are there; trust me.
January 2nd was the best weather day so far. There was actually a live sun sighting. We have been blessed with mild temperatures and little rain. We went into town for lunch and tried a new place, Grey’s Lane Bistro. Very nice little place. Hugh lunch.
Stopped in various venues to say our goodbyes to friends. Saw Grainne for the last time. She has graciously agreed to store a box for us to be in our new house when we arrive back in April. Saves lugging all those adapters, converters, plugs, and wires home and then back again, especially since we won’t need them until we get back.
Some final pictures. Note the very small brick tower on the highest point in the last picture below. That’s Eask Tower. The view from up there is supposed to be fantastic. We’ve never gone up. It’s high on the list to do on our spring trip back here.
There is a Sun
Dingle Pubs – Part V
So that’s all the pubs in Dingle town. But there are many more on the Dingle Peninsula (including Quinns’s and Paddy O’Shea’s in Ventry, the South Pole Inn in Annuscual, Brick’s near Wine Strand, a couple in Ballyferriter, Krueger’s in Dunquin, and Tigh T P in Ballydavid. We have been to all of them.
We haven’t seen a lot of sun, but we haven’t a lot of rain (by Ireland’s standards) either. And the temperatures have been relatively mild. I think it was warmer here yesterday than in Scottsdale. Go figure.
We slept late, as usual. It doesn’t get light here until 8:30 AM. Elaine cooked breakfast. It was cloudy but clear in the afternoon. No rain and no fog. So we decided to take Grom and drive up to Conor Pass, down the other side to Castlegregory, and then back up through Camp and Annascual to Dingle, a nice circular loop. We stopped at the top of Conor Pass for some pictures. Normally buffeted by wind, the pass was oddly still. Down the other side we drove onto a beach, Kilcummin Strand, and took a leisurely walk. No campers, buses, trailers, or large vehicles of any kind allowed on the Conor Pass road! You’ll see why in the pictures.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
Dingle from Conor Pass
We walked into town in the fine weather for dinner at the Chart House. I had exactly the same thing as last time. Elaine did not.
Hhhmm, I think I missed a day. Must have been napping.
Sunday
A quiet day. Elaine took her walk early and stayed dry. As she returned I went for a walk. As I got to the farthest point, it started raining and I got pretty soaked on the way home.
Lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches at home. Dinner at home too. Delicious lamb sausages from Mr. Kennedy’s butcher shop. With local Maharees potatoes, the creamiest and best tasting potatoes in the world.
The big event for Sunday was the concert we attended at 7:00 PM in St. Mary’s Church. It was sponsored by and was a fund raiser for the Billy Riordan Trust. The link tells the whole story. In brief, Billy Riordan was a recent graduate from Galway College when he died of a brain hemorrhage while trekking in Malawi, a very poor country in Africa. His mother, Mags, a Dingle woman, went there to lay a memorial stone and fell in love with the people and the small town on Lake Malawi where he died. Hundreds of miles from the nearest medical clinic, the residents had no local health care, not even a doctor. Mags started the trust to set up and run the Billy Clinic which was set up in 2004. Mags Riordan now spends her life raising money for the clinic which is entirely supported by private donations. She spoke eloquently at the concert, and we are proud to have helped in her effort.
The concert was grand. There was music of all types by notable local musicians. The highlight for me was the fiddling by a local, John Kelly. The highlighter of the concert was Mary Black, a noted singer from Dublin who spends much of her time in County Kerry. Listen to her sing A Song for Ireland. It was all grand!
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures. And enjoy the videos.
Monday – New Year’s Eve
Beautifully dry day! We had walks in the morning. For lunch we went into town for seaood at Sheehy’s Anchor Down Restaurant. I had a mackerel salad and classic fish and chips. Elaine had local calamari and deep fried monkfish. The Sheehy’s are fishermen and catch all the fish they served. It turns out we had met one of the sons in O’Flaherty’s when he was playing the fife there on night. I had talked to him and he was in the restaurant and remembered us.
I took a nap in the afternoon, and then we headed into town for New Year’s Eve drinking and reveling. We got good seats at the Dingle Pub before the crowds rolled in. There was music and frivolity. We had no intention of lasting until midnight as the plan was to head home at 9:00 PM for appetizers while we watched the Dingle Harbour Fireworks from our window. Grand show of fireworks! After that we briefly considered walking back into town for the fife and drum parade that leads up to midnight, but we demurred.
Dingle is filling up as we approach New Year’s Eve. Surprisingly, Dingle has become a New Year’s Eve destination for the Irish and the English and even beyond.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
From the Irish Times:
They know how to throw a party in Kerry, oft referred to as the Kingdom. From Killorglin’s Puck Fair to the Rose of Tralee, you can be guaranteed some serious devilment. Nowhere is this more true than in the coastal town of Dingle on New Year’s Eve. Perched on one of the westernmost tips of the country, there’s a wildness to the landscape and a wildness to the locals. NYE is celebrated in spectacular fashion, starting early in the evening, when it’s standing room only in the town’s pubs. Consider Dick Macks on Greene Street and Foxy John’s famous hardware store/bikeshop/pub on the Main Street to be at the centre of the action. At 10pm the entire town takes to the streets and heads down the hill to the harbour. There’s an impressive fireworks display from the pier (this can be seen from around the town, even if you don’t make it to the water’s edge). Then it’s back inside for a hot whiskey to warm your bones (they make a great drop in the local Dingle Distillery) before heading outside again to follow the Dingle Fife and Drum Band on its procession around the town. This culminates just before midnight, when thousands gather on the Main Street to ring in the new year.
Anyway, Saturday was a quiet day for us. Elaine took her walk in the morning. I stopped at the SuperValu for another bottle of Dingle Vodka. Of late going back to 2012, Dingle has it’s own distillery, aptly named the Dingle Distillery, just at the edge of town. It started by brewing up Dingle Gin and has since expanded into vodka and three types of whiskeys. It is very highly thought of, and I can vouch that their vodka, whilst expensive, is deliciously good in gimlets. (I can’t find Rose’s lime juice like I use at home, so I use Robinson’s Crushed Lime & Mind cordial – very good!) .
As We Left the House for Dinner
Houses Across the Bay Reflected in the Water
On Saturday night we decided to try a relatively new entry on the Dingle restaurant scene – the Random Restaurant. We arrived at 7:45 for our reservation to a bustling scene. We started with glasses of champagne – what a surprise. Notice the Christmas ornaments made by one of the staff – Christmas trees made entirely of pasta! Then we both had seafood chowder for starters and agreed it was the best we have had in Dingle – high praise indeed. Elaine had hake, a haddock like fish, for her main while I had the 1/2 duckling. Excellent and plentiful food! That duck had to be a fat critter when he gave it up to be my dinner. No room for desserts.
We stopped in at the Dingle Pub to see old friend Richie O’Brien of Dreams of Freedom, an excellent Irish Rebel Band. He wasn’t starting until 10:30 PM, so we just chatted a bit. He plays at 9:30 on Sunday and we may see him then. We also stopped at O’Flaherty’s (where we had parked the car), but there was a private party going on.
Some replies to some of the comments people have made – we read and appreciate them all!!:
Yes, I am feeling better. Good, in fact. No more bloody noses since that first day last Saturday. Elaine visited the local Medical Center and asked if they could do a cauterization (in case I needed it). No go. That would require a trip to Kerry General Hospital in Tralee. That’s about a 40 minute ride away. Hopefully I won’t need to visit. Fingers crossed.
We return home on January 4th. On the 3rd we will drive to Dublin and stay overnight near the airport. I hope we get the Ducati Suite again. We couldn’t really enjoy it last time because Elaine didn’t have her suitcase yet. We didn’t check in until after 10 PM and we left right after we retrieved the errant bag from the airport. (I will point out that we have never flown British Airlines without some major issue or other. But that’s another story.)
The Galloway cattle are called Belted Galloways (or at least we call them that). They originated in Scotland, but we have encountered them around the world on our travels.
Mianne: GREAT pictures from Puerto Rico. We couldn’t be in more different places. Hope you are having a great time.
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year back to all who have sent similar wishes our way.
Friday was very Irish, weather wise. Clouds, light rain off and on, fog. The whole Irish thing. We had a very quiet day. It ended on a high note with a grand dinner at our favorite Dingle restaurant – the Chart House. It has no connection with the US chain. Jim and Susan are the proprietors and are now good friends. We have been dining there since the late 1990’s. After Kir Royales, Elaine had Dingle Bay Seafood Chowder with croutons and a dash of citrus oil followed by the Salmon which was the special fish of the day. I had Croquet of Skeaghanore Duck with Confit Leg, Pak Choi, and Date Jam (OMG!!!) followed by the other special, West Kerry Rack of Lamb. For dessert Elaine had a trio of ice creams with praline sauce and I had the scrumptious flourless chocolate cake with ice cream. The wine was a German Pinot Noir that was quite good. (You almost never see any California or other US wines on menus in Ireland. Lots of wines from Australia, South Africa, France, Germany, and Spain.)
Here are some pictures from dinner and another round of Dingle Pub fronts.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
Best weather day yet. No rain until at night, still relatively mild, and we even had a sun sighting or two. That’s rare for Dingle at Christmas time.
Elaine took her morning walk and we had just yogurt and granola for breakfast. Then we took Grom out for a spin around Slea Head Drive, Ireland’s prettiest drive. It’s magnificent when the sun shines brightly, but it’s beautiful any time. One advantage to seeing it now is that there are no tour buses on the road. Lunch was at John Benny’s Pub (no relation to Jack). Dinner was at home – leftover steak, Rogan Josh, and veg. And wine, of course. And some more of those delicious mini mince pies with whipped cream for dessert. After dinner we wandered downtown for a walkabout and some drinks (Guinness for me; Hot whiskeys for Elaine) Pictures will tell the story.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews show just thumbnails of the pictures
