Exploring Dingle by Land & Sea

(8/7)  Tuesday –

Today we woke up with hopes of kayaking; however, all of the tours were booked for the day so we basically had a free day.  After breakfast, the first order of business was getting some laundry done, so we each dropped off a small bag of laundry at the cleaners to be picked up later in the day.  Then we just bummed around town, hopping from shop to shop, eventually working our way into a place called Foxy John’s.  Upon first glance, one might think that Foxy John’s is a pub . . . or a hardware store . . .well actually it’s both.  Since we were technically still in a store, we considered this to be an extension of our shopping, even though the only things we were purchasing at this point were pints.  I’d switched from beer to mojitos and now to cider.  I like to have options.  After everyone enjoyed a pint, we headed across the street to do some more “shopping” at another half pub, half clothing store.  We each enjoyed another pint, the ladies having half-pints, and then set out to find something for lunch.  Beer before lunch, that’s just how the Irish do it.  We ended up at The Dingle Pub, where we enjoyed a late lunch and had some time to catch up on the Olympics.

Once our bellies were full, and we were out of shopping options (riiighht), we decided to go for an hour long boat tour of the Dingle bay.  To date, this was one of my most favorite parts of the trip.  Seeing the shore and all of Dingle from the water was amazing and I was able to get some great photos.  We also got to see Dingle’s local celebrity, Fungie.  Fungie is a dolphin who made his home in Dingle Bay in 1983 and has been living there ever since.  The locals aren’t sure why Fungie chose Dingle Bay, but they’re definitely happy that he did because they’ve been able to create an entire industry around him – boat tours, kayak tours, Fungie paraphernalia, Fungie children’s books  . . . you name it.        

We didn't plan ahead for dinner, so we wandered town until we found a place that had room for us - The Old Smokehouse.  The food was good, but not a place I'd rush back to.  Mr. and Mrs. Dite headed back to the B&B after dinner and the rest of us went found a pub and enjoyed a few beverages before turning in.  Yes, we definitely did a lot of eating and drinking on this trip.  In hindsight, I wish I had taken a picture of each pub we stopped in.  I could have had an entire Pub Tour photo album.  Tomorrow is our last day in Dingle and then we're off to Kinsale.