Things I Learned in Ireland

As you all know, I'm back from my long-anticipated trip to Ireland. I thought long about how best to describe what was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Initially, I had planned to record the trip in a journal I brought with me, but after the first day I never seemed to find the time to write anything down. I was too busy experiencing the most beautiful place I've ever been, rebuilding family relationships, and quite frankly having the time of my life. I did, however, keep accurate notes of where we went and what we did, and between myself, Dad and my brother, Seth, we three took about 1200 pictures.

Don't worry. I won't post them all. Just the really good ones.

I decided I would write about the trip day by day. I'll post a new day of the trip every few days or so until I'm done. Hopefully you'll get a few laughs. Feel free to comment.

And Dad: I know you're reading this. I told you I'd get to it eventually, so get off my back. It would be swell if you and the other clown who went with us would register for Blogger so you could comment yourself. You don' t even need to make a blog. I plan on writing insulting things about you both, so either register or suffer in silence.

Without further ado, here are some Things I Learned in Ireland:

1. The Irish love Boston. However, many Irish seem to believe Boston to be a suburb of New York City. I told a lovely old woman I was from Boston and she replied, “Oh, how nice. My daughter lives in Queens.”

2. For all those curious about how we fared driving in Ireland—where the car, the driver, and the shift are all opposite here in the States—I can only say this: the most experienced highway driver in Ireland would flat-out shit his pants driving in Boston.

3. In Massachusetts, you can’t drive 3 miles on any major highway without passing a State Trooper lurking on the side of the road just looking for any excuse to pull your ass over. Over there we went days without seeing a cop. There is very little police presence in Ireland, particularly outside of the cities and towns.

4. In Ireland, when someone holds up two fingers at you, he doesn’t mean “Peace”—especially if you’re driving.

5. No matter what the law technically says, pedestrians do not have the right of way in Ireland, particularly in the cities. If you are a pedestrian, do not test this. You will die.

6. Smile. You’re on camera, pretty much everywhere, from the busiest tourist attraction to the smallest hole-in-the-wall pub.

7. Ireland is the big boob capital of the world, or at least of every part of the world that I have seen so far.

8. Toilets in Ireland flush. Or they don’t. Finding out is a surprise.

9. There are few urinals in Ireland. Mostly there are walls that you piss against.

10. Contrary to popular rumor, Guinness is not served at room temperature in Ireland. At least it was not served warm at any of the many pubs I patronized, nor was it served warm at the Guinness Storehouse. Guinness does taste better in Ireland, but not for any reason I can explain, except for the obvious (i.e. that it’s Ireland).

11. It is impossible to get a martini. It’s like no one ever heard of one before. The Irish drink their gin straight.

12. Irish gin sucks.

13. Irish television is awful. Not that I watched much of it. The Irish don’t watch much of it either. They go to pubs instead.

14. Ireland is the only country in the world where there are more pubs than people.

15. In Ireland, you can bring your kids to a pub. In fact, it’s encouraged.

16. Despite what you may expect, we saw very few drunken people, certainly less than you would see in any bar in Boston on any night of the week.

17. Irish people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. In fact, I only met one Irish person who was a crab, and that was a cranky old woman at an antiques store with a little dog that was even less charming than her. Despite the fact that everyone in Ireland thinks the American President is a complete maroon (and who doesn’t, really), the Irish seem to genuinely like everyone.

18. Everyone except bagpipers (and the English). Pipers get no respect in Ireland, a theme I will touch upon more than once in coming posts.

19. Ireland is the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life, and I have been to many different places. I’m not saying this simply because it’s Ireland and I’m The Angry Piper, nor am I saying it because of #7, above (although that doesn’t hurt, either). It seems everything man-made is made of stone. The scenery is breathtaking pretty much everywhere you go, you can’t avoid scenic castles if you try (they’re everywhere) and the foliage is more beautiful than New Hampshire in autumn. My brother Seth is a landscaper and a certified horticulturalist. He was in awe.


20. Ireland is the first place I have ever been where I really didn’t want to come home.

7/30/07 Day 1: Boston/Dublin

It was one of the hottest days of the year, and I was to meet my father and brother at my childhood home, where my brother now lives. My brother called me while I was en route to complain about my chronic tardiness. “Why am I not surprised?” he said. “Just get your ass over here. The limo’s waiting.” We had decided to take a limousine to the airport, as parking a car for a week there would cost more than a limo would, and one of us would have to drive, to boot.

I arrived at the house to see my father and brother standing next to the limo diver, whose name I would soon learn was Aziz. All three were soaked with sweat, as was I, as my car does not have air conditioning.

"Oh, shit!" I yelled, slapping my forehead. "I forgot the tickets!"

I was kidding, of course. My father laughed. My brother did not.

It wasn’t much cooler in the limo. Aziz drove us to the airport with all due speed, where we discovered that our supposed nonstop flight to Dublin was in fact scheduled to make a brief stopover in Shannon. In other words, ours was not a nonstop flight. How none of us knew this is still a mystery to me, as Seth and I booked (and paid for) a nonstop flight. It certainly cost enough. Once we checked our luggage, Dad and I got in line at the security checkpoint while Seth vanished to smoke a cigarette, telling us he’d find us on the other side. I looked around idly, and that’s when I saw someone instantly recognizable to most Americans.

“Is that Hulk Hogan?” I asked Dad.

Dad looked over. “Yep,” he said.

In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid question. It was undeniably Hulk; he wore his trademark bandana and wraparound shades. It’s not like Hulk Hogan would be very successful traveling incognito, so why try? He was preceded by a small entourage; some PR guy clearing the way and a guy my Dad would later remember was Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart. No bodyguards that I could see, not that Hulk Hogan really needs any. Hulk Hogan is a rather large guy. He makes me look tiny, and I am far from tiny. They ushered him through the security line, and he arrived at the checkpoint at roughly the same time I did.

I don’t go crazy for celebrities. I don’t see them very often. Still, I figured what the hell.

“Hi, Hulk,” I said.

“What’s happenin’, brother?” he replied. He sounded tired and looked like he just wanted to get through security as fast as possible. He hadn’t started to draw a crowd—yet.

Nevertheless, he didn’t have an easy time going through security. They made him go through the metal detectors about ten times. I’m sure it was for the public’s benefit: “Look, everyone! Here at Logan Airport we take security seriously! Not even Hulk Hogan gets a free pass!” Never mind that the guy probably has enough metal in his body to make him wary of magnets, or how incredibly ridiculous the idea of Hulk Hogan hijacking a plane is. When he finally got through security, he disappeared into a VIP room somewhere. I don’t know where he was flying to, but it wasn’t Ireland. Turns out he wasn’t the only one who had a hard time with Logan security.

I was beckoned through the metal detector by a guard about my age. It beeped. “Whoa,whoa…stop right there,” he says, all authority, like I’m about to take off in a sprint. As if I could go anywhere flanked by two conveyor belts. “You forget something, buddy?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“You got anything in your pockets?” he asked, far more belligerently than necessary.

“Just my wallet,” I said.

“I didn’t ask what you had in your pockets. I asked if you had anything in your pockets,” he said. I'm not kidding. He actually said that. His not-nice tone made it very clear that I should know he was single-handedly keeping Boston safe from terrorism.

I almost didn’t make it to Ireland. It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this who knows the Angry Piper personally that I was sorely tempted to tell this asshole to go fuck himself. But I realized that the small amount of power he possesses at this pissant job is as good as it gets for him, and asshole or not, how I answered could be instrumental in getting to my plane on time without a cavity search.

I took a deep breath. “Same answer,” I said, taking out my wallet and showing him.

“Put it in a bin and get back in line,” Asshole said. So I did.

I went through the line three more times before I cleared security (turns out it was my belt). I discovered his attitude didn’t get any better, and that it extended to everyone—male or female, old or young— equally. When I finally joined my Dad on the other side, I explained to him what happened. “The guy’s an asshole,” Dad agreed.

Suddenly I realized we had a big problem. My brother would eventually have to come through that line. Seth is not a patient guy at the best of times, and when confronted with obvious assholish behavior, he tends to respond in kind. Dad and I assumed the trip to Ireland was doomed before we even left Boston, and it was with genuine relief that we greeted him when he finally came through. No problems.

“You see Hulk Hogan?” I asked.

“No.”

He was just here,” I said.

“Bullshit.”

“Whatever.”

We had a quick bite to eat at the airport restaurant and sat in the lounge to wait for our flight. My brother leaned over towards me and sniffed.

“Dude, you stink,” he said.

“It’s 98 fucking degrees and humid and I just carried a 60 lb. suitcase for 45 minutes. What do you want?”

“You not to stink,” he replied. I stared at him. He smiled. I sighed.

It was going to be a long trip.

We left Boston at 7:15 pm and arrived in Dublin roughly seven hours later. On the plane, I read 202 pages of Anthony Bourdain’s The Nasty Bits. Although I brought six more books, I would barely touch any of them for the duration of my stay in Ireland, doing most of my reading on the flights. Try as we might (and I, for one, did try mightily), none of us could sleep on the plane. When we reached Shannon airport, Dad and Seth got out of the plane to stretch and look around. I stayed inside; for some reason that doesn’t make sense even to me, I wanted my first steps in Ireland to be in Dublin. And so they were.

Soon, the plane once again took off for the half hour flight from Shannon to Dublin. From the air, Ireland is a mosaic of green and brown, a jigsaw puzzle of fields and bogs partitioned by stone walls, hedgerows and trees, miles of land with no houses to be seen. We flew over the Wicklow Mountains, brown and lumpy like a rumpled old blanket, then out over the Irish Sea before doubling back to land in Dublin. From my window seat, I saw my first glimpse of Ireland’s grass off the runway. It was clover.

We picked up our rental car, a Ford Focus, and arrived at our hotel at 4:30 a.m. Boston time, or 9:30 a.m. local time. Dad and Seth were starving and availed themselves of the breakfast buffet. I passed. Hotel food at €18, or about $27, was a bit too steep for me. I just wanted to shower and sleep for a few hours before looking around Dublin.