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Here's Barb at the beehive huts, near Slea Head. These are supposed to be something like a thousand years old, constructed by hermits or religious devotees or somebody else who wanted to be very, very alone, didn't care much where he lived and didn't have a lot to build with. There are lots of flat stones lying all over the ground in Dingle, so these guys piled them up in a circle, like an igloo. Why these are called 'beehive huts' and not 'stone igloos' is beyond me, but I'm not on the tourist board, so it's not my call. If you ask me, they look suspiciously like somebody rebuilt them a year or two ago, and it might just possibly have been the local farmer who charges a pound per sight-seeing tourist, or they might actually be a thousand years old and just look as though they're remarkably clean and well-kept, especially for ruins that thousands of tourists tramp through every week.

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The O-Men (trademark applied for) pause somewhere along the tourist circuit on the Dingle Penninsula to vogue for this stunning photograph. Ain't we a bunch of studs? Especially the guy in the middle? Somebody in the peanut gallery has asked about the toupee. It's a hat. I will never wear a toupee. You can hold me to that.

The tourist circuits around the three penninsulas in County Kerry are known as the Ring of Dingle (okay, that's enough of that), the Ring of Kerry, and I forget the name of the other ring right now, but it'll come to me, I promise. By unofficial agreement, the traffic on these rings moves in an anti-clockwise direction, but the guidebook doesn't explain why, so I decided to go my own darned way and was feeling pretty good about making my own decision until we met a tour bus. They're wide enough to take up the whole road and big enough to squish tourists who have the temerity to disreguard unofficial directives. So for crying out loud, if the guidebook suggests something, no matter how whacky, JUST DO IT!

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This is a shot of Dunquinn -- or Dunquin, or Dun Quin, I'm not sure. Everything in Ireland is spelled at least two different ways. Killarney is also Cill Airne, and everything is labelled in English and Irish. (Which is not Gaelic -- that's what the guidebook says, SO BELIEVE IT!) Since the English is also supplied it's not a big deal, but there are one or two isolated spots where the road signs are in nothing but Irish, so if you haven't been paying attention, driving can become a teensy bit more complicated than you bargained for.

As for Dunquinn, it's a small harbor between Dunmore Head and Clogher Head, and features very prominently in the tourists shops this year because a well-known photographer (well-known to tourists) took an artsy-fartsy picture of a flock of sheep winding their way up the stair-step road you see snaking up the rocky point. I couldn't arrange for the sheep, sorry.

Not going on to the next page? You're on Page 4 right now -- remember that. Page 4. Y'all come back.

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