Ireland: Day 5

I messed up the order of the blogs. The activities below actually occurred on day 4 and the activities listed in the day 4 entry happened on day 5.

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We drove from Portmagee to Dingle, which took about two hours. We wondered around the waterfront for a few minutes before heading to the aquarium. It was small, but interesting. Niamh really enjoyed touching the sting rays. We then headed to the James G. Ashe pub for lunch. After lunch we headed out to follow Rick Steves' self guided tour. The distances in his book did not match our odometer, but they were close. Here are the highlights from the tour:

• Dunbeg fort
• Kavanaugh cottage- abandoned 150 years ago. It has a few artifacts and tries to show what life was like during the famine(side note: I listened to a radio program that stated that the Irish refer to that time period as a hunger, not a famine. There was plenty of food, but those in power sold the food outside of Ireland.) We ran into a small issue while feeding the animals that were part of the exhibit. Two of the goats stuck their head through the same small opening when trying to get some food and got stuck. It took them a minute, but they worked themselves out.
• More clochans (beehive huts)
• a beach
• Gallarus Oratory This is technically free, but the individual who owns the property charges you to walk across his property. Since it is more or less another clochan, we decided not to pay and went on our way.
• Church of Kilmalkedar- this is where the kids fell asleep and our camera battery died.

It took about 90 minutes to get back to Portmagee in the evening.