On Saturday, August 27 we left Kinsale and drove on small and winding roads all the way to Dingle. The distance is just over 100 miles and it took quite awhile. We did stop in Killarney to break up the driving.

Killarney is a cute large sized town that is fairly touristy thanks to the proximity to Killarney National Park.

We continued on to Dingle. I’ve been wanting to return since we were here for a short visit in 2009. We got to the B&B before check in and the owner allowed us to put our bags in the room, even though it wasn’t quite ready yet.

The B&B is walkable to everywhere in town, so that’s what we did. We walked up the street and I was looking for my ancestral home. Bingo, there it was! It’s a different color and a different business, but it’s definitely the same house.

The house is now the Dingle Further Education and Training Centre. It’s also known as the Rice House, which is the family name. My 8th & 9th great grandfathers were born in Dingle and immigrated to Colonial Virginia in 1650. I was able to trace my line of the Rice family back 4 more generations in Dingle. There is a connection with a different branch of the family that had a connection to Marie Antoinette.

We continued to walk around town and popped into a couple of shops. we also scoped out places with outdoor seating for our dinners for the next 3 nights and a pub that would have live music tonight that wouldn’t start too late. I guess we are officially old geezers now.

It was late enough, so we walked back to the B&B, put our things away and walked back down to the waterfront to choose where we would eat. Dinner was okay, nothing special. We won’t go back there. Choices with outdoor dining are limited but I’m sure we can do better. We headed for The Dingle Pub, chosen mostly for their clever name. Ha! While I went inside for a bit the others were outside and apparently were accosted by some very drunk women. When I came out one of them became very chatty with me, not knowing I was with the others and insisting I should become friends with Jim, Marie and JD because we are all from America. She was trying to get me to hug her and I told her to get away from me. Wow!

We decided Saturday nights were best left to the drunks. We will attempt hearing music again Sunday, when the weekend party people have gone home.

Stephen, our B&B host, told me about his old history teacher who had a lot of information about the Rice family and even wrote a book about one of them. He runs a B&B and Stephen suggested I contact him for further information. I emailed him and hope to hear back.