Cookies and Milk in Dingle, Ireland

Our coach bus rumbles along the crooked road as it snakes through the grassy hills of Ireland's County Kerry. The bus trip from Galway to Dingle takes six hours, with the final two hours or so being consumed by a treacherous climb up through the mountainous Connor Pass and down the valley into the tiny harbour town of Dingle. One of the best treats a public transit trip through Ireland offers is the colorful landscapes on display through the Bus Eireann window as you travel from beautiful Point A to gorgeous Point B, wherever that may be. Hills of deep, rich green. Clouds of amazing shades of gray. And always herds of bright, white sheep freckling the fields. As we drive up the steep switchback of the Connor Pass, my girlfriend tells me, "I can't believe how many sheep there are up there!" It is truly awe-inspiring to see little white specks up on slanted, almost-vertical mountain slopes and to realize that those blurred figures are sheep, making their home among the green grass that crowns the Connor Pass. Some of the white dots are visibly smaller, prompting both of us to smile wide and remember the tiny, cute lambs we saw up close earlier, stumbling on young legs as they followed their stern, stout mother sheep with legs like a chicken.
Soon the bus, carrying only the driver, one elderly man in an Irish cap with his redheaded grandson and the two of us, descends the mountain and arrives in Dingle. The water sparkles on our left, where a small group of ships and boats are docked in the harbour. To the right, a row of houses, all adjoined to each other and painted in various pastel colors stretches the length of the harbour. The bus slows down, as if to give us a chance to take in the shimmering beauty of this small town, and stops right in front of the harbour. My girlfriend and I look at each other and both exclaim "Wow!" We both know this is going to be a great trip, considering it can't get much better than a bus ride through small towns, across the countryside, up a mountain and through hills of every shade of green lined with ancient stone walls and inhabited by sheep and goats.
We hop off the bus and grab our backpacks from the storage compartment under the bus, then head to the nearest grocery store for food and directions to John G. Ashes Bed & Breakfast, our home for the next 24 hours. As we scan the aisles for nourishment, I notice a pack of young Irish lads, which seems to resemble a hungry soccer team after practice in America. It turns out they are a Under 7 boys football squad from this small village, and it also turns out they have good taste. One of them yells "We need biscuits!", referring to a pack of chocolate chip cookies that looks huge in his small hands. They all agree, and one of them climbs up on the dairy case to get some milk. My girlfriend and I can't deny the temptation of good old cookies and milk, like the ones we grew up with back in Minnesota, and we make exactly the same purchase as the young soccer hooligans. We feel slightly foolish waiting in line behind the kids and their coach, who smiles and shakes his head. One of the boys sees us and smiles, his ruddy face dotted with freckles. "Good selection of biscuits you've got there, folks," he tells us. "You too!" I tell him and my girlfriend and I laugh as they rip open the biscuits and start sipping their milk on their way out of the store into the clean, salty ocean air of little Dingle.