2 Best Sights in The Southwest, Ireland

Signposted from the main road, and accessed via a dramatic corkscrew walkway, Dún Chaoin pier is surrounded by cliffs of colored Silurian rock, more than 400 million years old and rich in fossils. Down at the pier you can see naomhóga (open fishing boats traditionally made of animal hide stretched over wooden lathes and tarred) stored upside down. Traditionally, three or four men walk these currachs out to the sea, holding them over their heads. Similar boats are used in the Aran Islands, and when properly handled they're extraordinarily seaworthy. Five minutes south on the R559  don't miss an opportunity to visit staggeringly beautiful (but lethal for swimming) Coumeenoole Beach at the foot of a curving stepway. It also featured in Ryan's Daughter in 1970. 

Since 1983, Dingle's central attraction, apart from its "trad" music scene, has been a winsome wild bottlenose dolphin who has taken up residence in the harbor. The Dingle dolphin, or Fungie, as he has been named, will play for hours with swimmers (a wet suit is essential) and scuba divers, and he follows local boats in and out of the harbor. It's impossible to predict whether he will stay, but boatmen have become so confident of a sighting that they offer trippers their money back if Fungie does not appear. Boat trips (€16) leave the pier hourly in July and August between 11 and 6, weather permitting.