Dingle

The town that the peninsula is named after, Dingle, is a tourist drawcard. So I parked my car in the council car park, braced myself and wandered onto Main Street.

Well if it brings the punters in, why not?

The bookshop cat. Its likeness is even on the shop fresco.

The Strand was where most of the people were.

Probably swelling with music in the evenings but I didn't check this.

Fungie is a bottlenose dolphin that had been frequenting the bay since 1983, but failed to appear in 2020, so sadly he may have "gone out with the tide".

There is fishing activity in the bay.

By this time I was feeling like having some fish so I went to the second of these pop-up vans.

Cod and chips. Chips were hand cut which was fine by me, but the cod was rather bland like in Limerick.

This was a telephoto shot, the corvids aren't actually eyeing my lunch; this was taken before lunch.

Colourful shop.

Time to explore the peninsula despite the unpromising weather as I would not have the time to do so the next morning, having to continue north.

Limerick

Here I have arrived at the outside of Limerick Colbert station.

As for the reason I was starting in Limerick, I had discovered that car hire was appreciably cheaper if picked up at Shannon Airport instead of a city. So the plan was to spend a day and a night in Limerick and then catch a bus to airport to pick up the rental car.

It was about 20 minutes walk to the hotel in the old town. It's pleasing in an old-fashioned sort of way. I realised that one of the attractive features of Irish shops is the use of gilt lettering for signs, as well as the use of bright colours for buildings. It makes them stand out in overcast weather.

Notice the Irish harp which is in the Guinness logo. I didn't attend any pubs during my stay by the way. I'm a non-indulgent drinker, I was going to bed early, and finally I didn't want to be in crowded rooms in the current pandemic.

I must have liked the bright red.

As planned for, I was too early to check in, but I could leave my luggage with reception and go explore the city, and grabbing lunch.

A branch of the Shannon is the Abbey and together they bound Kings Island.

The potato market wasn't operating that day and I didn't need a coffee at that time, but the premises were intriguing.

Not the least because of this flower pot.

Limerick is at the head of the Shannon estuary and the banks are close at this point. Further downstream, it takes a road tunnel to burrow under the Shannon.

You might be wondering how the 5 line verse form was named after the city. The theory is that at the end of the recitation in a parlour game, a refrain from a song that goes Won't you come to Limerick? was added.

Modern Limerick doesn't look anything like the poverty-stricken backdrop of Angela's Ashes. I'm sure the slums described are long gone. Note that many of the details of the story are disputed.

A shiny department store of the Dunnes chain.

An enticing meat store in the pedestrian precinct.

By this time I was feeling a bit peckish so I got a fillet of cod and small chips from Luigi's Fish and Chips and took it to the nearby People's Park to consume. Cod is actually fairly tasteless. I suppose if it had taste it wouldn't be fresh. The portion was larger than I expected so I excised the batter and tossed that to the corvids and pigeons.

After that I took some pictures of the rose garden.

Back at the hotel I finally checked in and rested. Although I did stay up until the early evening, there are no more pictures for the day. I got some sandwiches from the Tesco in the shopping centre for dinner. The music for the adjoining pub could be heard until about midnight. I woke in the small hours, pottered a bit, then went back to sleep until morning.