I eventually made it to Dingle via the kindness of  few strangers and opted to spend a few days here to explore what the area had to offer.  I arrived in mid day and checked into my hostel before heading into town to check out the pubs that were recommended on the internet including one brew pub.  I headed to Dick Macks brewpub for a beer and tried my best to strike up a conversation with some people.  Unfortunately I struck out here (the beer was really good though) and ended up heading to another place across the street that looked interesting.

The next place was actually half a hardware store and half a bar and they had a nice traditional irish band playing in there when I arrived.  Again, I didn’t have any luck striking up a conversation but did enjoy the music a lot.  It was also a strange mix of bar/hardware store that made it interesting.

the place was called Foxy Johns and is for sure worth a visit if you are in Dingle.

After two failed attempts at meeting people, I decided to head back to the hostel for a rest and maybe try the bar below.  The hostel was more of a guest house and less of a hostel so there wasn’t really a common area but they did operate a bar at night.  When I got to my room there were two girls in there who wanted to go to the carnival in town and so I tagged along and we went to check it out.  I typically don’t ride temporary carnival rides very often as I really don’t trust them, but in this case I decided why not and tried out the swing ride.

it was a pretty small carnival.

After the carnival we went in search of food and then headed to one last pub to end off the evening.

The next day I tried to determine if i wanted to hitchhike into the middle of the peninsula and do a hike or rent and ride a bike around the perimeter.  Given the still recovering nature of my foot and wanting to cover more ground on the bike, I opted to renting the bike and headed off on a nice bike ride along the coast.

I stopped off at a beach and walked along it for a while.

stopped at the a few places along the coast for some amazing views.

Eventually I made it to Dunmore head which is a filming location for Star Wars the last Jedi and the many signs in the area made sure you didn’t miss that fact.

It was a beautiful area and was ripe for photo taking.

A little further down there was another lookout which highlighted the set for the small village on Lukes Island built for The Last Jedi on top of a hill in the distance.

I then continued on my way, cutting inland a bit and towards my final destination which was the West Kerry Brewery.  Along the way there were a few places trying to cash in on the star wars fame.

I arrived at the brewery and  was the only one in there for the first several hours.  For this reason the bartender and I struck up a pretty enjoyable conversation and so the 2 hours I spent there seemed to fly by.  The bartender also gave me a few recommendations in town and then I was off for the final leg of the journey back to Dingle.

I arrived back with no issue and then went back to the hostel for some much needed rest.  When I arrived a new person was trying to get into the room and I thought I had recognized him from earlier that day taking pictures of a liquor bottle out on the coast.  I asked him about it and sure enough he was the one taking product shots for the distillery in town called the Dingle distillery.  Turns out he is the son of the owner and is in charge of the branding and media creation for the Dingle Distillery as well as the Pour House which is the first craft brewery in Dublin.  We got to talking and then decided to hit the town together that evening.  Rory has been to Dingle many times and so I let him take the lead on where we should go.

We ended up hoping around to a few places, ending the night at a place where one of his friends was playing some traditional music, so we headed over to check it out.

it was a good time and I had a lot of fun.  Rory was heading to the distillery the next morning and asked me if i wanted to come check it out.  Obviously the answer was yes.

The next morning we got up and headed over to the distillery so he could take some video and I could check the place out.  It is a medium sized operation that is known for their Gin despite making a few other types of spirits.  When we went in, they were bottling the Dingle Gin, which was fun to watch.

We took a bunch of videos and then Rory was nice enough to give me a ride to Tralee where I caught a bus to Cork.