The Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland is truly stunning.

The town of Dingle itself is the most darling, bustling little place. Its tidy main streets are lined with colourful stone buildings housing pubs, shops of irish linen and cashmere, and an extremely popular ice-cream parlour. It was first of June when I was there and it was hopping with busloads of animated American tourists. It was so busy I lost my boyfriend (scarf-shopping is very disorienting work). When we finally found each-other he was wearing a new hat and  I, a new scarf.

We were hoping to grab a coffee before heading out but couldn’t see a cafe through the crowd. While surfing instagram (that’s a thing, right?) shortly after I came across a cute cafe that had just opened on a side street called Bean in Dingle. Sigh. (that’s me being wistful for the coffee I never got to have but want to be having in Dingle right now). We ended up with an afternoon Guinness as our refreshment, so it’s all good!

We left the town behind us to do the incredible scenic drive around the peninsula. There were a lot of tourbusses on the road but luckily I had read which direction you should drive around the peninsula. You do not want to meet those buses oncoming, you want to go in the same direction as them. We were caught in a traffic jam while a huge bus navigated a sharp turn with traffic backed up on either side. It was a lovely jam though, we had the views to enjoy with a giant shrine and a friendly seagull as company.

The landscape left me speechless. So I’ll let Dingle do the rest of the talking…