Dingle was our base for exploring this well-traveled peninsula and its fishing villages. Dingle seems to have the right mix of locals and good restaurants to serve the many tourists. While we were there we were often rained on five or more times a day. This peninsula is dotted with many smaller fishing towns, all having several nice pubs and restaurants. Late into the evening we could hear what sounded like an entire bar singing Beatles songs.
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A large part of the Dingle, Ireland economy is based on a lone bottle-nosed dolphin named Fungie. No less than eight large boats full of eager tourists will mill about in the harbor hoping that Fungie will soon be sighted. Boats refund your ticket price if there is no Fungie sighting. Immediately upon spotting Fungie, which seems to be a near certainty, all the boats speed forward, creating a wake from each boat hoping Fungie will choose their wake for surfing and jumping, providing paying guests with the best view. It is a hokey but fun time, waiting for Fungie to suddenly appear, then the shouts of delighted tourists as the boats speed off, another successful day in the Fungie business.
Kenmare, Ireland is a small town in southern Ireland that serves as a very good base for exploring the peninsula via the well-traveled 110 mile Ring of Kerry and the smaller peninsula to the south, the Ring of Beara. Wonderful views of the North Atlantic, great stone walls where sheep graze waiting for their next sheering and vast fields of vivid shades of green await the travelers to this area. Miles and miles of thick, solid stone walls are a striking and common sight. No mortar binds these rocks. What backbreaking work it must be to first dig these rocks out of the fields where the sheep graze, then carry them to the wall and sort through them for the right shape to fit with the adjacent rocks. At least they had cool weather and great views during their efforts. Even more picturesque is the adjacent Ring of Beara, which we circumnavigated twice.
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Swansea, Wales is generally not a tourist destination town, no tour buses, no cruise ships. More than once, we were told by those familiar with the town to not go. It is mostly a working class town with no major sites to see. The nearby town of Mumbles has an arcade and pier which seemed to be a vacation spot for many UK families with children. We selected Wales simply since we thought we would not wish to drive further from Chipping Campden, England, working our way to Ireland. We found Swansea to be refreshingly very much like a US city. We saw stop lights at intersections instead of roundabouts, large grocery stores, motels with breakfast included and wider roads in town. Since eating the local foods is a large part of experiencing the region, I was treated to kippers (smoked herring); laverbread (seaweed puree) and cockles (shelled muscles) at our hotel breakfasts.
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There is not a single new looking building in this quaint old town that has managed to retain loads of charm and avoid all forms of commercialism. Closer inspection will reveal that many of the homes are recently built, but are of a similar quarried yellow stone so they all fit into this old town feel. They may be adjacent to an authentic thatched roof home dating back hundreds of years.
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There are two main attractions to see in this area, Stonehenge and the 750 year old Salisbury Cathedral. The best Indian food we have ever had at the Shah Jahan and the friendly owners at the Old Ale House were added bonuses. It surprised me that Stonehenge is a site that is totally visible from the main road. Other visitors at Stonehenge told of how they were able to simply drive up in recent years and walk in. No more. Now there is an admission fee, buses which take you to the site and the obligatory gift shop.
Monument “Les Braves” at Omaha Beach
Upon arriving at Omaha Beach, on the coast of Normandy, France, it was surprising to see it being used much as any beach would be on a warm summer day with people swimming, playing and having family picnics. What a difference 70 years make…. I am not saying the beach should be off limits, just that no TV documentaries I’ve seen depicted it being used as a normal beach, so I was surprised. There are two war monuments on the beach, memorializing the 2,500 Americans who died during the initial assault. The metal one, shown above, seems very appropriate for the marking of the site. To me the artwork depicts bombs dropping into the sand and the resulting explosions.
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Paris is a beautiful city with a great deal of wonderful sights to see. However, due to the Bastille Day festivities, many were fenced off or had fences around them that spoiled photographs. Also, the unusually hot humid weather made venturing out a chore. It seems a month-long stay in Pairs would be necessary to see the public fountains and sights in the right light.
Photos here are of the ‘Three Graces’ in the Louvre looking at an adjacent painting and the winding staircase leading to the Versailles royal library where I got a rare, private tour.
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One does not wait in the hot humid weather and fight the crowd to get a good view of the Mona Lisa or study the brush strokes of Leonardo de Venci. All this effort is to simply snap an phone picture of it, or worse, a ‘selfie’… It is behind glass, so all photos have glare and reflections of other phone photographers. The end result is a snapshot of very poor quality. If you really want to see it, you would go to an art book. There is no organization, like a clockwise flow, entrance and exit. You have to struggle just as hard to get out of the mosh pit as to get in! I think a LOT of travel is just so one can say, “I have been there….”
The Eiffel Tower has thousands of lights that twinkle on the hour, every hour for about five minutes, much to the delight of those partying at the base of the tower and along the Seine River.