1) When staying in hostels, always sleep on the bottom bunk. When you come in and everyone else is sleeping, you don't have to climb up the creaky ladder. And you don't have to sleep with all your belongings as bedfellows to make sure they aren't stolen... you can just stow them under the bed.
2) Long, hot showers are not overrated. Hot water in Ireland, if there is any, lasts for about 6 minutes. If you're lucky. And sometimes it smells like eggs.
3) Women snore louder than men. They often sound like half-strangled bears. Or dump trucks.
4) Many people here choose not to partake in the habits of daily deodorizing. I choked today walking past a man stocking shelves at the SuperValu. Ironically, it was the aisle where one can find... you guessed it... deodorant.
5) Locally-sourced ingredients make all the difference. In Dingle I've had seafood chowder made with only locally-caught mussels, salmon, and shrimp, and steak straight from the farms on the outskirts of town. The veggies have been local as well. Local food rocks!
6) I am not travelling alone, I am travelling with myself. I learned this in the Dingle Record Shop, courtesy of a very jovial Irish woman named Mazz O'Flaherty. She told me there is no better travelling partner than myself, then bid me farewell from herself and her "angels." As Ernest Hemingway once said, "Never go on trips with anyone you do not love." Well, no problem there.
7) Chips are french fries. Crisps are chips. A store is a warehouse. A shop is a store.
8) A "two or three minute walk" in Irish time is a 30 second walk in real time. "I'll have it by tomorrow" means you may never get it.
9) Ireland is home to beautiful landscapes, beautiful monuments, and beautiful people.
10) And here's the cliche: Níl aon tintéan mar do thintéan féin. (There's no place like home.)
For those of you interested in my itinerary, I leave Dingle bright and early tomorrow morning. My bus leaves at 7:15am for Dublin. Well, actually, my bus leaves at 7:15 for Tralee, my bus from Tralee to Limerick leaves at 9:00, and my bus from Limerick to Dublin leaves at 11:30. I should be in Dublin by 3:30 or so. Eight hour travel days are awesome. Sure, that may sound sarcastic, but I'm actually serious... the buses are comfortable, I get to read, and sometimes I see rainbows out the window. In the words of Lao Tsu, “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
Here are yesterday's photos from Slea Head, as promised.
Creepy Irish sheep who came running over to me when I stopped to blow my nose and stared at me until I left. Little did they know, I had no food.
Ancient bee-hive huts, built 2000 BC!
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