November 8: Kilarney

Started the day with a ferry crossing on the River Shannon estuary in the Dingle penninsula. We had lunch today in Dingle which is a fishing village which is also home to a dolphin called Fungi - like the fungus. There was a fisho's we went to for lunch but the fish & chips was super expensive (like 12 euros or something). However, they did have deep fried mars bars which I found to be very tasty. Yum.

We basically spent the day driving in a pretty small area around the penninsula but it was full of windy roads - we haven't been on a highway at all. Most of the roads we have taken have been really narrow roads for two-way traffic and our bus is covered in dust from all the driving.

Anyway, today we took a trip down to the beach (read: at the atlantic!) and Kevin said that there was some legend that if you dip your feet in the water part of your soul will stay there and you will come back to Ireland. I didn't do that because 1) I don't believe in souls, 2) even if I did believe in souls, I'm a lawyer and therefore wouldn't have a soul, 3) it was cold and I didn't want to get my feet wet. It was a really pretty spot though, and a lot of people got kind of wet because the waves were pretty big.

We continued driving and passed some beehive huts built by monks in the 6th century and then we stopped at Clougher Head (spelling?) which is the most western point of Europe! It was windy as hell and I had to try ridiculously hard not to fall over when I walked because otherwise I would land in sheep shit.

After that we stopped in Kilarney for the night. I ended up in a room with Steve, the Canadian boys Maxx and Drew, and Sam from Chicago. Kevin warned us that the male to female ratio in Kilarney was like 3:1 because of all the Irish farmers, and we did see a bunch on the road driving their tractors into town! We started the evening with a group dinner (where they gave us bottomless french fries when we complained too much haha) and then to a pub or two, and then to a pub/club/bar thing called the Grand. It was the super shit craic. There was an awesome band called The Wilful who did covers of ACDC, the Fraggle Rock song, the Ghostbusters song, RHCP, Rage against the Machine and yeah. I talked to the frontman from the band after the gig and the conversation went exactly as Kevin predicted it would if an Irish guy tried to pick up a non-Irish girl. Haha. He was going to college in Galway and he seemed pretty nice, but then I left because I didn't want to hold him up from packing band stuff so I went into the other room where the boys were dancing and stuff and there were lots of really swirly lights.

It was an awesome night in great company. Sam, Conor, Maxx, Drew and I left at about 1 or 2 or something and found Nigel wandering around in the street (he left like 40 minutes before us) because he couldn't find his way back to the hostel, and then we stopped at a burger place because people were hungry, and Nigel got two burgers and ate them, then Conor's nose randomly started bleeding, and then Maxx got a pizza but then some drunk guy came and took photos with us and ate a piece, and then Sam ran down the main street in Kilarney with his pants around his ankles. Hahaha. Super fun. That's the kind of craic I'm after.