Dingle

On Friday morning we woke up early to go to Dingle, a small town on the coast of the Dingle Peninsula.  After we got ready we made our way down to the kitchen for breakfast.  Laura's mom made us toast, sausage, and black pudding.  For those of you who may be eating right now, I would suggest reading this post another time.  When I first heard of black pudding on the list of items in a full Irish breakfast, I assumed that it was what the American's consider to be chocolate pudding.  I couldn't be more wrong...

Black pudding is an Irish breakfast delicacy but it's also eaten all over Europe and Asia.  Black pudding is congealed pigs blood.  It's made by cooking blood with a filler (meat, oatmeal, potato, etc.) until it's thick enough to be congealed when cooled.  Black pudding is then sliced and either grilled or fried.  Although I wish I wouldn't have known what it was before it was offered to me, I gave it a try!  I  can usually ignore the thought of how somethings are made while I eat things, but this was just too much for me.  Let's just say, I gave it the one bite rule!

After breakfast Meghan, Laura, Johnny, and I made our way to the bus stop to go to Dingle.  The bus ride took a little over an hour.  The bus ride was almost as beautiful as the destination itself but I wasn't able to capture pictures that weren't blurry.  In Dingle we just walked around.  There weren't very many tourist traps besides little shops.  This town was absolutely beautiful!  It was a stereotypical Irish fisherman's town.  It had a huge marina filled with fishing boats and sailboats.  All of the shops, restaurants, and pubs were brightly colored and there was a surprising amount of palm trees! I might say that it's been my favorite town in Ireland.

Just before hopping the bus to go back to Tralee I went to the infamous Murphy's Ice Cream shop.  It is a 100% natural ice cream shop that has won a bunch of awards.  I got a two scoop dish with Bailey's Irish Cream and sea salt (actually delicious!!).