Today was our driving tour of the Dingle Peninsula. Again following Rick Steves’ self-guided tour, we started in Dingle and traced a clockwise path around the peninsula. The weather for our trip was ideal–sunny with a few clouds, no rain or high winds. The first major stop on the trip was at a small collection of “beehive huts“, so-named for their shapes. These were in use by the Irish well before 600 A.D. and typically use only stacked stones–no mortar of any kind–in construction. One particular building that we visited was the “best preserved example” of a rock church building from the 600’s and it is still completely waterproof on the inside, save the open door and window.
Continuing the drive (including one particular curve when we had to ford a stream in our little Ford Fusion), we came to a little secluded beach on which Sam and I took the opportunity to take off our shoes and socks and wade in the ocean a bit. Having done this, both Sam and I have at least stuck either a hand or a foot in both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the Pacific Oceans. The water was very cool, so I was not too sad that we had both forgotten our swim trunks.
At about lunch time, we found a small hill (mountain, by Kansas standards) that we decided to climb and have a picnic lunch. We had stopped by the grocer before heading out on our journey and picked up some stuff for our picnic, so we put it all in a backpack and 
headed up the hill. It was an easy 10-15 minute ascent, and God treated us with the best spot for a picnic we could ever hope to find. We were disturbed once by a very noisy group of American tourists from an Irish Bus Tour, which made us appreciate all the more the fact that we were exploring the island with nothing but each other and our little guide book.
We concluded our driving tour at the ruins of an 12th century Romanesque church. As the English was expanding its empire and tightening its grip on all its domain, it replaced the little monastic settlements all over the island that dated back to St. Patrick and St. Brendan with more of the traditional Roman style church building for their Church of England to prosper in the rural areas.
Ending the day with a slight sunburn but with some great memories! We’re off to collect our laundry which we left at the cleaners this morning on our way out of town. (We only packed one week’s worth of clothing for our trip!)
