Dingle, Ireland, located in Kerry County on the Dingle Peninsula, is a tiny town of only 1700 people, but lively enough to rope in people from all over the world. On the sunniest of days in Ireland, I can certainly see why. Upon arriving in the quaint and colorful village, we were immediately drawn to the idea of two activities: 1) fishing and 2) eating fish.

I had purchased Lonely Planet: Ireland for Kindle for the trip, which highly recommended a fresh catch restaurant called Out of the Blue. It said if there's no fresh catch, they don't even open. This mantra makes for my kind of place. However, we had just eaten breakfast and decided a fishing trip would make a good time killer before our late lunch we could not stop thinking about.







Although we had no idea of how to organize this fishing trip, it came pretty easy when we stumbled upon a storefront near the water for Dingle Bay Charters, 25€/pp for a two hour trip. At first, we were a little skeptical, but after reading some TripAdvisor reviews that said not only can you keep the fish, but they will skin and filet them for you, we were sold! It only got better when only three other people were on the trip with us.

In the two hours on the boat, we moved around to a few different locations and caught mackerel, cod, and trout. We also through some smaller ones back (although the seagulls learned quickly to follow us and snatch them right up). Even if we had not caught anything, the scenery alone would probably have made the trip worth it.























There's a funny character around Dingle named Fungie. Fungie is a bottlenose dolphin who loves to show off and be around humans. He is the lone dolphin and the area and has been around since 1984 (although now, it is past a typical bottlenose dolphin's 25 lifespan). There are also boat tours that run just for Fungie sighting and if you don't see him, it's free! So naturally, we tried to spot Dingle's most famous resident, too, but the Fungie specific boats obstructed our view.



Arriving back at shore, we bagged up our fish filets and had plans of cooking them up when arriving at our final stop of the day, Lisdoonvarna, for dinner. However, disappointment struck when we walked up to the little Out of the Blue restaurant shack and found out they were only open for dinner. With two more stops ahead that day, we had to push aside our sorrows and accept the fact that we'd be missing out on their catch-of-the-day menu.

Luckily, our fishing boat company told us we could go get our fish cooked at John Benny's Pub. Apparently, we were supposed to notify them ahead of time, so we walked over to where we bought the fishing tickets and the woman locked up shop, and walked us over to John Benny's to tell her that we were with them (one of the several instances of out-of-their-way Irish kindness). For 10€, they cooked up our entire catch and served it up with fries, a bit of salad, and loads of fresh tartar sauce! Unfortunately, we were too full to try their seafood chowder, which is apparently the best in town.







I cannot conclude without mentioning how freaking sunny it was this day. It was nothing unusual to these gals from Texas and California, but the Irish simply did not know what to do with themselves. I did not pack sunscreen, so before the boat I wanted some, but everywhere in town it was either nowhere to be found or sold out. Everywhere we went, people were lobster-red (I went a different lobster red route, wearing my jacket on the boat to shield myself some).

The Irish sun came out to play and we were so.dang.lucky.