Last night in Ireland

:( I wish I didn't have to leave, although I'm glad I'm headed back to London tomorrow instead of home. Vacation isn't quite over yet. Another beautiful day in southwest Ireland. I circled the Beara Peninsula this morning and then drove back to Dublin. Beara was lovely, but I think Dingle and Kerry were better so I probably could have skipped it and tried to hit the Wicklow Mountains. Live and learn. Plus, the roads were ridiculously treacherous - I thought the roads were bad yesterday; today was harrowing. About halfway around the peninsula I was wishing I was no longer on it and despairing that I might never get back to a passable road...at least not while alive. But all's well that ends well. I'll put today's pictures up and probably yesterday's too, before I go to bed. I haven't looked at yesterday's yet, but I think they're even better than today's (which I like quite a bit). Sadly, some of the most beautiful places were at such dangerous spots on the road that it wasn't safe to stop or even pick up the camera to attempt a drive-by. The drive-by pics I did take were in areas too dangerous to stop, but isolated enough to permit one-handed driving. But, let's be honest - although a few of the drive-bys may be somewhat interesting in a modern art sense, they fail miserably in the sense of accurately capturing the beauty of the scenes. You may have noticed a new addition to my drive-by portfolio - I've added a type of mise en scene shot to my repertoire so you (and I, when I reminisce) can see exactly what I was seeing while driving. Not sure how the shot of my Diet Coke got taken, but it's a wonderful memory so I kept it. I also added some pics of my car - in response to the requests for more personal photos. Sure, my car isn't a person but it's been a wonderful traveling companion and it doesn't hate to have its picture taken (at least it didn't say anything about it). Someone will have to come along on my next trip and drive sometimes so I can hang out the window for some of the harder to get pics.