The World is Our Oyster: Emerald Isle

And the adventure continues...in Ireland!

It's funny how after twice taking the 17-hour flight between Dallas and Sydney, a 7-hr flight from Chicago to Shannon feels like it goes by in a flash. Thank goodness for all of the TV shows and movies on in-flight entertainment!

This trip is a bit of an experiment for me. Usually I move around a lot while I travel to try to see as many parts of a country as possible, often sacrificing quality for quantity and exhausting myself (and anyone traveling with me). But I have been to Ireland once before, long ago, so it didn't seem like a painful idea this time to pick just one part of the country and plant. Last time here, my mom and I had marveled at our brief glance at the Dingle Peninsula as we sped by in an insane, 10-day circle of the whole country. Wishing at the time that we could have explored it a bit, we chose tiny Dingle Peninsula as the spot where we'll spend our whole two weeks, getting to know it well and seeing what it's like to travel at a very relaxed pace.

So we--my mom, sister, and I--arrived in Shannon and were met by our great friend P, who is spending the whole summer in Ireland with her husband. The four of us set off on the couple-hour drive down to the Dingle.

We took our time heading south, stopping in adorable towns along the way...

...and literally stopping to smell the roses (in Tralee).

We arrived to Castlegregory, the first of two spots we'll use as home base the next couple weeks, and settled into a cozy B&B with a lovely view of the base of Mount Brandon (which is apparently shrouded in mist more often than not).

It's been great fun to explore tiny, quaint Castlegregory, which has a fantastic Sunday morning "country market" full of sweets and breads and cheeses and handicrafts and CHOCOLATE. (My fantasy is to spend every day in Ireland drinking coffee and eating scones, with an occasional bowl of soup and bar of chocolate thrown in for variety. But I won't actually do that. Maybe.)

Once we had a solid night's sleep under our belts and were no longer dozing off during every pause in the conversation, we started exploring further afield. We're going to try to take a day hike every day of this trip (weather permitting, and that's actually a big question mark in this chilly, rainy, windy corner of the planet). We warmed up our legs today with a long walk on Brandon Beach (aka Back Beach, aka the longest beach in Ireland).

Then we drove through Cloughane out to Brandon Point, where the clouds momentarily cleared, giving us great views over the water and back toward Brandon Beach.