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Published: January 20th 2012
I'm not a big fan of birthdays and turning 40? Please. Let's just try to forget about it. Jeff reminded me about how we plotted to help my mom celebrate 40 - by telling her we were going to take her somewhere special, blindfold her and drive her to an old folks home.
Children are precious.
So anyway, yes, let's just forget about 40...Oh, wait, except when it comes to making an excuse once again to get the heck off of the continent, then it becomes this beast of coersion to bully my brother and husband into spending MY BIG BIRTHDAY somewhere cool, somewhere where vomit and rain and wind will make it all memorable.
The dart thrown at the map landed on Dingle. Why not? The claim was that they actually DID something for New Years and hey, that meets all of my requirements.
The teeny tiny town of Burgau, Portugal spoiled us rotten last year
(Burgau Blog) - we have expectations, people. Fireworks, a party in the streets (albeit a party of 200 but a fun friggin party nonetheless), a bunch of crazy-ass English people buying shots till 3 in the morning. Could Dingle make turning
Farty as fun as turning Tirty Nine?
It rained and blew sideways up until about dinner time, threatening my fireworks but then (Happy Birthday) - it.quit. After a nice dinner out (thanks Jeff) and a couple of drinks we joined the fray on the bay to watch Dingle's version of pyrotechnic fun. Here's how they did
Dingle Fireworks! Brilliant work, Ireland. The ships in the bay and happy 1000s of Irish in the square were a nice touch.
Back to the pub where we spent another hour listening to music and watching a particularly intoxicated gentleman piss the band off by trying to join them. Jeff wondered out loud why there were no bouncers in Ireland. The female owner of the pub escorted the man out several times and it never got ugly...just watching him totter back and forth made me wince waiting for the inevitable moment when he tried to kick the floor's ass with his face. The last we saw of him he was trying to free a nice family of their doggy-bagged fries outside the pub. Here is a short video that inadvertently caught Mr. Stumbles enjoying himself too close to the band...he'd be the fellow
hitting his knee (out of rhythm), sitting with the band:
Rumor had it that there was some sort of marching band led parade that happened right before midnight. Details were a bit hazy but when people started leaving the pub, we went along with them. Asked the first gentleman we ran into where the parade started (as people seemed to be going every which way) and we joined him for the walk to the starting point outside yet another pub. We arrived just in time for the fife and drum contingent to get lined up and away we went!
