Day 2

Today we had a Dingle Peninsula coach tour planned. Dingle is the name of the town our hostel was in. There is actually a quite heated debate with strong opinions going on about the name of the place. It has been known as just Dingle for a long time, but in Irish it should be An Daingean. But then also it has a more traditional/older name which is Daingean Uí Chúis. So all the people have these opinions about what the place should be called, it is kind of interesting.

The first place we stopped on our little tour were some ruins of a fort. There was an amazing movie that they had there – for my family, the acting was almost but not quite as good as the Rob Roy movie – in which they showed some possible uses the fort had. It basically consisted of men running up and down the walls and waving torches. They also had some Irish famine cottages there that we went inside and looked at. It was really interesting to learn about the Irish potato famine- I had heard about it before but never realized what an impact it really had. The famine happened in the 1800s and went on for about 5 years. After the famine hit and all the people died, over 20% of the population of the country died! I was thinking about the impact it would have if that much of the population of our country died – obviously they didn’t have as many people, but still, that would have been a huge tragedy. Also near the cottages Robyn and I saw this white horse, and swear it is a unicorn in disguise. It had this amazing long flowing mane and I will just say that if it would have had a horn sticking out of its head I would have not been in the least bit surprised. Robyn and I named him Germaine.

Also as we were waiting to get onto the bus we saw another amazing animal sight- sheep! Not that this is an unexpected sight in Ireland, but this time we saw a bunch. There was a sheep herder just herding his sheep down the road, but there was another tour bus on the road where they were trying to go. So they just ran on by the bus while it stopped and waited for them. Amazing.

After we left the unicorn and the sheep, we went to a museum/gallery place they have called the Blasket Centre. It is dedicated to the people that lived on the Great Blasket island, which is an island that was inhabited until 1953 until the government made everyone leave because it wasn’t safe. Apparently the island is famous because it had 3 famous writers that came from the island and they all wrote in Irish. They had a movie of course, and also some exhibits about the native people of the island and about the Irish language.

We left the blasket centre and as we were driving to our next destination our driver Rob decided he wanted to stop and show us something. We stopped off and it looked like there was just a little beach there, but then we walked down closer and there were these amazing cliffs with the water dashing up against the rocks. You would have never just seen it from the road, so I was glad we stopped. I can’t get over the scenery here. I love the green so much, and every time I see another amazing valley or mountain covered with green I just fall in love all over again! It is not that I don’t like Utah, but seriously, comparing the landscape there to here is just not even fair. While we were getting on the bus after walking around there for a while there was a little dog that kept standing right by the door. Once we had all gotten on it just hopped right on after us and started running to the back! It was hilarious. So then Dr. Chapman had to go back and get it, and it made these sick yelping noises as he carried it off. I guess he just really liked us a lot. After we got back onto the bus we stopped some more times at an oratory and a church . . . I don’t really remember them much. By this time we were all completely exhausted and just wanted to go back to the hostel and sleep.

We got back to Dingle and we had some time to walk around and eat dinner. Robyn and I went to a pub called John Benny’s and it reminded us of Kim’s brother. We also afterwards got some amazing ice cream in the town- I guess it was hand made from local products. Then we had tickets to an Irish music concert at St. James church. The first performer was a lady who just sang some Irish folk tune-type songs with a guitar player and a bass player. At one point the bass player actually played a song on a saw using his bow and it was hilarious! After that there were 2 guys who performed. On of the guys played the guitar, and the other played a flute instrument and also some type of bagpipes that you don’t blow into, just pump them as you go. It was really interesting to hear some Irish music because I haven’t heard much of it before.

This is really long, but it was a long day. Also to note about today is that exactly one year ago my grandmother passed away. It was kind of a hard day for me in that sense, but I tried to think about how grateful I was that I had her in my life. I have another post that I will post later about her.