Top 10 Things I Learned About Ireland (Ep. 22)

Transcript

Drew (00:00:01):
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Drew (00:00:21):
Hello

Drew (00:00:22):
Everybody and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show we share stories, tips, and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, 837 miles of driving on the left-hand side of the road, 21 miles of walking through Dublin and four days, that's it, four days in Ireland. Is that enough for anybody? No, it's not. And so I'm going to have to go back one of these days, but just to let you know, I mean the original intent here was that I was going to spend three weeks in Scotland, but I was flying into Dublin and I said, I can't just fly into Dublin and not see some of Ireland while I'm here. So I lopped off a little bit of time and made sure that I went out to the wild Atlantic way and got to see a lot of Ireland.

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It was very, very cool. I learned a lot of stuff while I was there. There were some misconceptions I had about Ireland. I wanted to present an episode where I talked about the top 10 things that I learned about Ireland. My hope here is that I give you a little bit of food for thought before you make your first trip there, or maybe I'll help you relive some of those great memories that you had from your trip there. And so sit back, relax, enjoy the show, and coming to you from live in my house in Greenville, South Carolina. It's time to channel my inner Casey Kasem and count down the top 10 things I learned about Ireland. Number 10, it's worth knowing a little bit of Irish history before you go castle Hunting. Yes, me, I take for granted in the US I know a bit about US history, so when I go to places, I usually have some good background information.

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What I learned on this trip is that beyond St. Patrick and the Irish wars of the early 20th century for independence, I didn't know much. And that means I'm missing about 15 centuries worth of information and history. So when you're hunting ruins, it doesn't help you too much when you don't know all of these names and dates and none of it's really kind of sticking in your head. So it's good to maybe get a little bit of a foundation. And so I'm going to give you a little foundation, a quick foundation right now. Here's my history of Ireland in brief. These are the things that you will read mostly on these trips. Fifth century St. Patrick's, that's when St. Patrick came in and pagan Celtic history turned into a Catholic history, kind of a mix of both. That was what St. Patrick was known for was taking some of the pagan rituals of the Celts or Celts or however you're going to call them.

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And everybody in Ireland, by the way, says Celts. So they say that in Scotland, they say Celt. So I don't know, not sure did not get verification on that. But anyway, that's the thing about St. Patrick is the rise of Catholicism in Ireland, that was the fifth century, 10th century, there was a Viking invasion. Mayhem ensued. 12th century. This is where most of these castles that I visited, that's when they were built. And this was during a time when England was invading and the Norman Invasion is what that's known as. And so the Normans came in and tried to take over parts of Ireland. So you'll read a lot about those days. In your castle hunting 16th century, there was a nine years war. This was again England, Elizabeth the first trying to create a conquest of Ireland. At that time in the 17th century, there was the 11 years war, which was a Confederate war and Irish rebellion.

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This went on until Oliver Cromwell in England again invaded and brought that to an end. You see a lot of ties between English history and Irish history. Then the 19th century was when they had the Irish potato famine. And this was a time when the Irish language, which is a variation of Gaelic, began to disappear. But as you'll find out later on, it did not completely disappear. And then in the early 20th century, the Easter rising through the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, this is where you'll hear names like Michael Collins. This is where the Republic of Ireland came about, and the creation of Northern Ireland, which led to the troubles. And we've heard all about the I R A and all of that, if you followed any history of Ireland whatsoever. So that's my history in brief. So those are a lot of things that you're going to bump into when you're doing this Castle hunting.

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And I made the mistake of starting off by going to ruins first. And at the ruins there's almost, it's a mixed bag. The first ruins I went to there was nobody. There was a sign. It had the history in English and the Irish language, and I thought I didn't come here to read a book, but it was just a bunch of facts and figures. So when you go to a castle, you want to explore, you want to enjoy, and especially if you're bringing kids along. So one of the things that I would suggest is that before you go do a little research, if you're going to be going to a castle that does not have any kind of information other than one of these little boards, and you're bringing kids along, especially learn a few things, just some stories or something about it, there's plenty of information out there.

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You can do some Wikipedia searches or watch a few YouTube videos. People usually post some really interesting information about these particular castles and historic places, something that's not so dry as names and dates. So if you do that, and I'm just to pull back a second, when as a kid we used to go, my dad would take us to Colonial Williamsburg, and it was like having my own guide. I mean, he had history so well in his head that he would impart all of this information to us kids. And it made us love history. And it doesn't take a lot of work to find out a few interesting facts about the places that you're visiting. And in fact, that's what I'm doing on my website right now is each of these castles that I'm going to, I not only want to give you ideas of how to get there and what the experience is going to be and what it's going to cost you to get in, but I want to give you a little background on the history.

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Something simple, not going into a lot of names and dates, but trying to give you kind of a history of how that castle had impact on history. And then also talking about maybe a story, something that happened at one of these castles. So the Rock of Castle, it's also known as St. Patrick's Rock. There are these fun stories about putting your arms around St. Patrick's cross and you'll never have a toothache again or how the devil took a bite out of a mountain and spit it out. And that's the place where this big castle has been built. Those are fun stories, and those are, while they may be legends, not necessarily true, they're still fun things that you can kind of hang on to when you go to one of these locations. When I went to Cahir Castle, that's where John Boorman's Excalibur was filmed.

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So I posted on the webpage about that particular castle, the clip from the video or from the movie that takes place in the river that runs right next to the castle. So you kind of get a sense. So when you're standing there, there's something more to hold onto than, oh, isn't that really a cool looking castle? Now the other thing that you may want to do to make a better castle experience for yourself is to do a guided tour. Don't start off with a castle ruin that just has a board with information on it. Instead, go to a place like Ross Castle in Calarny. I think of all the castles that I went to, it had the best guided tour and it wasn't an audio tour. Audio tours are fine, but I find that when I'm doing the audio tour, I'm paying so much attention to what he's telling me to point to look at that I missed the story that he's telling.

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And so it's easier to have somebody kind of point things out. That human touch just makes all the difference to me. So at Ross Castle, I learned all sorts of stuff and it only cost me five Euro to go in no parking fee. It was great. And here's some of the things that I learned while I was there more than names and dates, I got a feel for how people lived back in that day. I found out why people used to die so young because they pointed out that they were eating off of lead plates and that they were burning this substance for light that was putting poisonous gases into the air. And we walked through that castle and we went up the stairwell and she described how the stairwells were built and why they were built the way they were. So they built these things to where they were clockwise.

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And the idea was strategically, if an intruder was coming up those stairs, he would have to fight with his weaker hand, his left hand, while the person coming down the stairs had the advantage because they could fight with their right hand. Now, this is assuming that the owner of the castle is right-handed. However, there was a stigma back then about being left-handed. And so even if you were left-handed, you probably were trying to learn to do everything so that you didn't have this stigma attached to you. So it's interesting to learn those kinds of things. And then any castle I went to after that, that was something that stuck in my head and I could appreciate that about the different castles that I was going into. So a really good tour can help get you off on good footing for the rest of your trip.

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Number nine, the woolen cap used to be serious business in Ireland, in fact, in all of the UK and Ireland. We'll talk a bit about that here in a moment. But first, what is the woolen cap? Well, you've probably seen it. One of the places that I most admired it was John Wayne wearing it in the movie, the Quiet Man back in the fifties. And so I wanted one, but every time I'd go somewhere in the US to find one, they looked cheesy, they didn't fit well, they were made out of polyester or something. They're just not really high quality, but they were asking for a high quality price for them. I thought, I'm going to have to go to the source. Well, I went to London, still couldn't really find anything that I liked. So my woolen cap search was not going very well.

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And I hate buying 'em off the internet because you don't know if they're going to fit or not fit. So when I went this time, I was going through Blarney Castle, and when I got done with the tour, I went through their gift shop and they have this really nice gift shop. There's a lot of stuff in there. Yeah, there's touristy stuff, but there was some high quality stuff in there as well. And then I go over to this rack and they have all of these flat caps. And so I picked one up that I liked and I looked at it when I looked underneath it actually said The Quiet Man, and it's based on the hat that he wore in the film. And I put it on my head and I said, yep, this is the one. I don't know what to call this thing, but it's a cap.

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I don't know. And I asked people, I said, what do you guys call these things? And one guy said, A flat cap. A tweed cap. They have all sorts of little names, but there's not like one master name for it. I did find that in Scotland, they tend to call it a bonnet. I don't know, bonnet just sounds kind of funny to me, but because I think of like an Easter bonnet, and that's the connotation you get here in the us, but they called it a bonnet bu and E originally. And so yeah, I could roll with that or tweed cap or woolen flat cap, whatever you want to call it. But I got one finally. And then I learned a little about the history of this cap. And apparently the reason why it caught on in all of these countries in the English and Irish and Scotland, Wales, all these areas, the reason it caught on was because of government action.

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Yes, they mandated that if you were over six years old and a male and a commoner on Sundays and holidays, you had to wear a wool hat. And you're going, what? Well, this is the wool lobby in 1571, petitioning this act of parliament to make these hats mandatory because there were a lot of sheep. In fact, if you go to Ireland and Scotland now, you'll see there are tons and tons of sheep. And so this wool needed to be bought by somebody to keep the industry rolling. So that's what they did. 1571, you actually have to pay a fine if you weren't wearing a hat and you fit the criteria. And so they did away with the law 26 years later, but the wool cap caught on and now they look nice. I really like them and maybe they don't fit you. Maybe they do fit your style, but whichever way it goes, now you can say, yes, I would like a bonnet or a flat cap, and you'll know that probably a cool place to go get one is take a trip to Ireland.

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Number eight, the Irish language is alive and well. So I talked earlier about how during the Irish potato famine, a lot of the Irish language was lost. Well, it was not completely lost. And as I understand it is still the official language of Ireland, and you will see it on every sign that you drive by in Ireland. You'll see the Irish language and you'll see the English language. And what I learned about the Irish language is that it's very, very close to Scottish Gaelic and that the two can communicate with each other and understand each other when they have crossing communications between the two cultures. So it's very close to a Gaelic. And so if you called it Gaelic, you'd probably be fine with that, but it is actually referred to as the Irish language. You're going to find pockets of it on the western shores of Ireland.

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Some of the places where you may find just Irish speaking people are Dingle Peninsula Kamara, which is above Galway and Donal. Those are three of the strongholds of the Irish language still taught in schools. And there's still people, like I say, who use that as their main dialect and their main language. And then you bump into people who you think are speaking the Irish language, but in reality, they're speaking English. And I had this happen a few times. I was in Lan, which is up near the cliffs of Moore, and I was in a pub. And while I was in that pub, somebody sat down next to me and we chatted for a couple of minutes and I have no idea what the conversation was about because he was telling me something really interesting, but I could not tell what language he was speaking. And then when I answered him in English, he continued speaking that way. So I'm sure what he was doing was he was talking to me in English, but he talked so fast and his dialect was so, so strong that I just couldn't understand a word. In fact, here's a little sample of some of our English language with a very heavy Irish accent

Speaker 4 (00:18:24):
When I ate that. Beautiful and should it be bright out and there could anyone up in the mountains, our night shore? Well, there was firstly five Sheepness making the alarms and everything, the sheep, let's count out nice between to be done about you. Nothing.

Drew (00:18:41):
What do you think? Did you get that? Do you understand that? Yeah. Well that was a Irish sheep farmer talking about his herd. That's what I dealt with. I have no idea. So there's certain parts of Ireland where it can get a little bit tough to understand people. And those areas that I was talking about, Dingle Peninsula and Donal and Kamera, those are all referred to as Gail Tucked. And I've probably mispronounced that. That's as close as I can get to it without having the dialect down. But those are the Irish speaking region. So if you ever hear somebody talking about Gale tucked, that is what they are talking about. There's other things that you got to get used to in Ireland as well, beyond just the Irish language or really heavy accents are some of the words and terms that will be different such as French fries being chips and potato chips being crisps and trucks being lorries and gas being petrol, all kind of fun stuff to get through.

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But if you ever want to hear a very interesting run on the Irish language really fast, that will make your head spin and make you understand what I was going through in that pub that night. Watch a movie called Snatch and listen to Brad Pitt doing his Piy dialect because it's priceless. And just the look on these guys' face when he starts talking. And as I've heard from people, they say that Brad Pitt did an actual, it's not necessarily a specific accent, but it is very, very close to the way some people speak in those areas. And something else that I was trying to find out while there is how people refer to certain things that I've had some confusion about football or soccer. Well, it's funny, I had a lot of people saying soccer, and so I thought that was interesting because always thought over there they just referred to it as football as well.

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They should because it's a sport where they actually use their foot. Whereas with American football, I think we're down to, if they take away the kickoffs, the only time the foot will hit the ball is on field goals. So not sure why they're calling it football, but hey, it is what it is. Celtic or Celtic, that one's always confused me, especially Boston Celtics because in Ireland I thought it was always pronounced Celtic and I did not get any definitive answer on that. Somebody said Celtic is Irish and Celtic is Scottish. But I heard people in Scotland saying Celtic as well. Gaelic or Gaelic Dunno. Again, that's kind of open to debate. And I think different regions of Ireland, I mean even Dublin has three or four different dialects just in that one town, so to say there's a true Irish dialect and that they pronounce these words one way or the other.

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I think it's a stretch. So didn't come home with any answers on any of that stuff, but it's all things that I'm aware of or can have a little more understanding. I'll have to just go back and investigate further. Number seven of the 10 things that I learned about Ireland, and these are in no particular order by the way. The stereotypes about Irish pubs are true. There's a movie I watched a few years ago called The Matchmaker, and it's all about a Boston politician who sends his assistant off to find his roots in Ireland. And she goes to this little Irish town and she meets all these charming people and they're hanging out at the pub and that's where they're having all their debates on the community and they have pictures of John F. Kennedy up in the corner and there's music playing and the Guinness is flowing like water.

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Everybody's got one in front of them. That is all true. They even look like sometimes I would see one and I would go, they're trying to make that look like an Irish pub because when you're in the us, if you're in Boston or even other places, you see those wood fronts with the sign up at the top and you just have this whole kind of wood paneling kind of look. It's amazing walking around and seeing all of these pubs and they all had that kind of a look. And then when you go in, they're just warm and welcoming and the people are full of stories and they love being ambassadors for their country and talking about their traditions. And then just to sit there and listen to the music. It's just very, very cool. And I found that from a food standpoint, you would find anything from no food to maybe throwing a pizza in the oven to some amazing comfort food.

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In fact, while I was in Dulan, which is where the eclipse of more are, I had, oh man, it was like Thanksgiving. It was roast lamb, stuffing gravy, potatoes, vegetables, the works, and that with a Guinness. I was a happy man. That was fantastic. The one thing that I did not see very much of in Irish pubs, scotch or bourbon. That's right. In fact, honestly, it wasn't until I got to Dublin that I saw my first bottle of bourbon. They had buffalo trace there, but the only other thing that you would ever find would be Jack Daniels, which is Tennessee whiskey, or you might find Southern Comfort, which I don't know what you classify that as, but those were the only two things you would find. And you definitely weren't seeing any scotch anywhere. If they had scotch, it was hidden on a back shelf somewhere.

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I mean the obligatory Johnny Walker bottle was not even around, but if you looked long and hard in certain ones, you would find a bottle of scotch somewhere. But normally you would find powers, dingle, Middleton Teling, and of course Jameson. And the difference between Irish whiskey and scotch whiskey for the most part is that the Irish triple distill the spirit which mellows it out a bit more over what scotch is. So the Irish are going to say that the Scots, they just forget the last step, but it's up to the individual taste. But it was interesting to hunt around and try to find, I didn't even find Coner, which is a ped whiskey, that's an Irish whiskey. And I wonder if I didn't find that because it's really kind of trying to mimic a scotch. I'm not sure. But anyway, I did find that very interesting.

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But the Irish pubs definitely a great experience. Whether you drink or you don't drink, you should experience one. If you go to Ireland, these of political opinions in Ireland, we sometimes tend to look at countries and take a stereotype view or a blanket view of what their beliefs are and how they see us and how they see themselves. And so this is why I love heading to the pubs and getting a chance to sit down and have a couple pints of Guinness. And by the time you're getting through that second pint of Guinness, you're getting a little bit more of the real opinion out of people. The guard comes down and they start to talk a bit more. And one thing that I've learned about politics over these years, when I was younger, I was very, very passionate about my beliefs and I wanted to find out what right and wrong was, and I would just stand my ground whenever I had a particular belief.

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But as I've gotten older, the one thing that I have learned is that I don't know everything. And no matter how much information I collect, that collection of information is limited to the sources that I got it from. And so actually going to a country and being able to sit down and listen dispassionately from a curiosity standpoint rather than I have to inject my beliefs on you kind of a standpoint, it's amazing the conversations that you can have. So a couple of things that were hot buttons at the time, one being Brexit and what's going on with that. And of course before my trip, I'm trying to figure out, I'm going to be in flying into the UK on April 11th and on the 12th was their D-day in terms of trying to figure out what's going on with Brexit. And of course they extended it into October.

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So no big deal. But it had me watching B B C news a lot to try to stay on top of the latest that was going on with it. And so I wanted to get kind of the pulse of what people in Ireland felt about this because Ireland's situation is that they are in the European Union and they're not leaving with the uk, whereas the northern part of the island, which is Northern Ireland, is part of the uk. And so there's this whole border issue where they have to figure out how can people cross the border in Ireland once Brexit happens, they call it the backstop. And this has created all sorts of tensions and it's really kind of held this thing up on top of politicians kind of kicking the can down the road and not having serious talks until three or four weeks before the Brexit deadline was coming up.

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So there's a lot of embarrassment I find in both Scotland and Ireland about this, but it's also created some other very interesting conversations. And one of those that I wanted to know a little bit more about was the unification of Ireland because for years and years and years, they were having squabbles about should Northern Ireland become part of the Republic of Ireland and just have a unified Ireland. And now all of a sudden with Brexit, there's this discussion of, well, is this actually going to create a situation where Northern Ireland says we want to stay in the eu? And how did people feel about that? What I was happy to see in the conversations that I had was that the old Catholic and Protestant arguments weren't being brought up. That wasn't really part of the discussion and that was the sticking point in terms of Northern Ireland.

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It was mostly based around religion and now it's more economic and just trying to figure out what is England doing right now and is this a country that we feel we should still have leading us? What's more interesting about it though is that I found a lot of people who were saying they weren't sure about unification, and that's because Northern Ireland has been, they've had a depressed economy for a few years, and so bringing them into the rest of Ireland right now might be more of a financial liability than one of this passionate feeling about unification of Ireland. So I would not have learned, I mean, I could watch the news as much as I want to over here. I would not have gotten a millisecond of that discussion without actually just sitting in a pub talking with people and getting their feel on how things are.

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Now, the other subject that got brought up a lot was Donald Trump. And I don't talk about politics on this podcast usually because it's very personal to people. Everybody's got strong opinions these days, and most people I find have entrenched themselves in the belief. So I don't push it. I like to kind of let you make up your own mind on things, but you can't avoid certain subjects. And Donald Trump is one of those subjects. And what I found was that people were willing to give their opinions, but they were also very curious as to why Americans voted for him. So it wasn't, you've have you lost your mind kind of discussion, but it was more just honest curiosity about what are they missing in this story that why were people so interested in voting for this guy? And on top of that, I was surprised to find that most people over there were shutting off news sources like C N N because they're so focused on Donald Trump that they didn't feel like they were getting any news anymore. And that's the feeling I have with the American news sources is that I can't really watch American news anymore because I don't know what's going on in the rest of the world. So I tend to watch B B C News or Al Jazeera or somewhere where they're actually talking about what the rest of the world is dealing with instead of just getting hyper-focused on one or two subjects like they do here in the American press.

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And it's funny too, I got some varying degrees on those news sources and other news sources that I should be paying attention to. Everybody's got opinions and it's fun to actually sit back and listen without having to try to push people to my point of view. And what you find is that by going into these pubs, you talk to everyday people and they will talk without prejudice as well. You're going to find people who have stronger opinions and they want to kind of school you on things. Yeah, that's going to happen, but in any situation, but I think at the heart of it, what I find is that for all of our differences at heart, we're all very similar. We all want what's best. And so listening without prejudice and trying to understand other cultures, it's what I love about traveling and it's why I always head to the bar and make sure that I have a little time to talk to the locals.

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Number five, I found out where to get the best Guinness, and it's not necessarily at St. James Gate. Now my love affair with Guinness goes back quite a few years and it actually goes back to cheers in Boston. Yes, the bar that led to the television show. Now, it doesn't look like the television show when you go inside, but it is a full working bar. And when I went in, I was watching them make a Guinness and they had this whole technique that they went through and I thought, isn't that interesting? I've never seen a technique on a beer pour before. And so I had tried Guinness years before but didn't enjoy it, and it was too bitter for me. I drank the extra stout out of the bottle, but I thought, this looks fascinating. I have to try it. They pour the Guinness, they bring it over to me, I take my first sip and it was love at first taste, to be honest with you, from that day forward, my eyes really never looked seriously at any other beer.

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It's like comfort food from a beer standpoint for me, just absolutely amazing. So once I got into the position where Guinness was my thing, then I started hearing all this lore around Guinness such as that crap that we get in the United States is not true. Guinness, you can only get real Guinness when you go over to Ireland and you especially should go to the source and get it from St. James Gate. Well, I'm going to Ireland. It's time for me to either confirm or put these rumors to bed. So first thing I do is I'm going to dingle. I am on the whiskey distillery tour and I say, where's the best place in town to get a Guinness and immediately get an opinion I should go to Dick Max or Kerns. So I decided to go to Kerns and I just had a great time there.

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There was a guy over there that was singing Irish songs in the corner, and there was a guy who was flirting with some American tourists talking about his time working on some movies like Ryan's daughter, which was filmed there with Robert Mitchum or Bridge over the River Qua. And then all the opinions about whether Ryan's daughter was actually a good movie or not, and just it was fun, it was enjoyable, and the Guinness went down nice and smoothly. I thought it was very, very good. Then I was hungry, so I said, well, where do I go get some food? And they said, go to Pauline's next door and you can get dinner over there. They have fantastic food. So I went in there more comfort food, stuffing potatoes, lamb, vegetables, and of course gravy. Everything's got to have gravy. And man, was I enjoying the food.

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My belly was growing and I was also taking on a Guinness at the same time. Well, I get the Guinness and I taste it and I start talking with the bartender and I said, how do you pour this and what's your technique? And I see you sell Murphy's too. And he said, well, you got to let it settle and then you top it off and you don't rush it. Although some locals like flat Guinness, and so if you just straight pour it without stopping, then you get a flatter Guinness that way. So apparently some people like it that way, some people don't. And the quality of that Guinness excellent, I think I liked it better than the one I had at Kerns. Now, the next night was in Duland in Ireland, and this is a small town that has two little pubs right across the street from each other that compete with each other.

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So I went to McGann's instead of McDermotts because I was told they had a little better food and I was very hungry. So I went in, they had some amazing Irish music going on, had another incredible meal, gravy of course, and a Guinness and excellent as ever. I mean just really good. So again, I asked the bartender about the best place claim and he said, well, you know what, you can get just as good a Guinness over here on this side of the island as you can get over in Dublin. He said, it's all about away how far the keg is from the tap. Okay, well that was interesting. Well, that was a really good Guinness. Now for the next 14 days, I drove all over Scotland and I was mostly drinking whiskey when I would go to the pubs to try a few different things out.

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But I would end the night with a Guinness because I needed to know, and so I would have a Guinness, and I was amazed that I was having some really good guinnesses over there as well. So finally I come back to Dublin, I go to the Guinness Storehouse. I'm excited going on the St. James Gate tour. I'm going to actually get to learn at the academy how to pour one. And so the first thing they do is they take you into this room where they have a little shot glass size of Guinness and they teach you how to taste it. I put it in my mouth, they said, feel it to the back of your throat. I'm tasting it like I taste whiskey, taste it to the back of your throat. And I got this bitter edge and I just could not get rid of it.

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And it wasn't pleasant. I just didn't really like it that much. So then when I got to pour my own pint, which was amazing and fun, I took my pint, went up and looked at this amazing 360 view of Dublin on the top floor of the storehouse, and I drank my Guinness and I did not enjoy it. I enjoyed the view, I enjoyed having the Guinness in my hand and in enjoying it at the source, but it was bitter and I didn't enjoy it. There was something missing. So I think what I learned on this trip is that Guinness is good when you're around good people. Yes, it does have to do with, it doesn't have to do with distance from the distillery obviously, because I've had really good Guinness in the US as well. Maybe it has something to do with the distance between the keg and the tap.

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It probably has more to do with how fresh the Guinness is in Ireland. Guinness is pouring and pouring and pouring like water in some pubs in the US it just sits there because it's not the main brew, it's not what everybody drinks. So it sits there longer and it probably takes on some of the characteristics of the keg that it's in or it just gets bitter as it kind of lies there. I think the pouring technique probably has some to do with it. Yes, the country it came from, well, let me just put that rumor to bed. Since the 1950s, every ounce of Guinness that's been sold in the United States has come from Dublin. So it's taken a ship across, but it's not coming out of some brewery here in the US that doesn't fit the standards of Dublin, but it is coming straight from Dublin.

(00:41:35):
It's just having to take a little rocky boat trip to get here. However, I did hear that they are planning on buying a brewery here and that production may start in the United States at some point if they follow the same recipe. I don't know about waters and all that sort of stuff. I dunno, we'll find out. But what I learned was that the best Guinness comes from the place where you just enjoy it the most. It's the atmosphere, it's a variety of things. So I would say that my findings are somewhat inconclusive, but that St. James gate is not the be all and end all of Guinness Beer number four bed and breakfasts in Ireland. Definitely the way to go. Part of the reason why bed and breakfasts are such a good idea is because you're not going to find a lot of name brand hotels when you're traveling around Ireland, but there are more reasons for it.

(00:42:39):
For instance, in Tmore, my first night I was at the little wood bed and breakfast and Lucy the proprietor came out, greeted me, and we had a whole lot of discussion about driving on the lefthand side of the road and kind of getting a lay of the land and stuff that you could do in Tmore. And then I had my first full Irish breakfast and it was wonderful. And then seeing this historic cottage and just getting a feel of being in rural Ireland and enjoying how people there live. So that's a big part of it. The other was waking up in the morning to bird songs that I hadn't heard. And sometimes when you're staying in cities and not getting to enjoy the country life, you miss out on some of this fun stuff. So it was cool. It sort of made me feel like I was at home in this place I'd never really been before then in a town called Baltimore, which is down in the southwest corner of Ireland, I got advice on the castles that I should go see.

(00:43:41):
And this is all information from locals and kind of a lay of the land. And it was interesting too because you get these community areas where you can sit down and talk to other travelers. And I had a chat with a grandmother and granddaughter who were from Reno, Nevada, and I found out that the granddaughter was 24 and she couldn't rent a car. She was a year too young, and the grandmother wasn't able to rent a car because she was 80. She didn't look 80 at all, but she was 80 and they said that she couldn't rent it because of her age, but in the end they did rent it to her and then the granddaughter was doing all the driving. But some of these things, it's stuff like this that adds to your knowledge and some of the situations may run into, and then they were talking about where they traveled and they had taken a different route than me and some of the places that they saw.

(00:44:40):
And I was thinking, oh, these are all places I need to add into my adventures. The one thing I will remember from that night though that really had an impact on me was watching the two of them spending so much time trying to upload pictures to their Facebook and Instagrams and get their information out there when they could have been having a conversation with another traveler and really picking up more of the vibe of the place that they're at instead of spending all their time funneling out information to family and friends. So that was a big reason why I ended up not doing a podcast while I was on the road because I thought I need to either pre-record my podcasts so that I can enjoy my time, but I don't need to be sitting there doing all of this work when I should be absorbing those few hours of time when I can be present and really appreciate the place that I'm traveling to.

(00:45:43):
And then in Dolan, that was my last bed and breakfast in Ireland, that's where I got the best advice on how to see the cliffs of Moore. And so he told me that go out at sunset and see it and that when you're going out there, you only pay to park until seven, and then after that there's no attendance around so you can just walk up there and look at it and do what you want to do. And then in the morning when I got up, there were other travelers who were down having breakfast and one couple was from Germany. And so I asked them some questions about Germany because planning a potential trip there. And then there was a family from Minnesota, which I found really funny because Minnesota is the next place that I'm flying to. So I got to ask them a couple of questions about my upcoming trip as well.

(00:46:33):
So there's a certain amount of serendipity that you can run into when you're talking to people in east bed and breakfast. I just think it's a charming way to travel. It's not always overly expensive, and I just feel more like you're getting in with a culture when you get a chance to stay at someone's bed and breakfast rather than some name brand hotel somewhere. Number three, I found out what an Irish breakfast is. So the Scottish breakfast, the Irish breakfast and the English breakfast, they all have certain things in common including boosting my cholesterol level as high as possible. But you'll find that they have mushrooms and grilled tomatoes and sausage links and baked beans and back bacon. And then I found my love for poached eggs there. I've always liked eggs benedict. And so poached eggs are just right up my alley. So I made sure to order those as many times as I could.

(00:47:34):
But the extra thing that you find on your plate that you do also find in Scotland, but not in England, is black pudding. And what is black pudding? You ask? Maybe you don't want to ask. I didn't ask. I got to put on my plate at the little wood bed and breakfast and I looked at it and I said, I think I know what that is, but I'm not going to ask. I'm just going to eat it because if I ask, they may tell me and I may not eat it. So I went ahead and took a little bite and I went, oh, this isn't so bad. And then I took another bite, said, yeah, yeah, this is okay, so what is black pudding? Well, black pudding is pig's, blood, pork, fat, onions, herbs, spices, and some kind of cereal grain like oatmeal or barley.

(00:48:30):
And then what they do is they slice it and lightly fry it. So if it doesn't sound overly appealing, I will tell you this. Here's what I appreciate about black pudding. When I went to Alaska and they were doing a demonstration on how the Elute natives handled the leftovers of a whale, they said that they would find a way to use every single ounce of that whale out of respect for the sacrifice that that creature made in providing them comforts and food. And so this is how I look at this whole idea of eating pig's blood is that in reality if you look at it, you are actually utilizing more of that pig and what that pig sacrificed himself for. And so it's not waste. And honestly, I found it even though it was slightly grainy, it actually tasted pretty good. I mean, it wasn't overwhelming.

(00:49:38):
It's not something I would seek out, but if it's on my plate, I'll try it. And it's not like blood pudding. Blood pudding is gelatinous, so I understand. And it is really just pig's blood with very little additional added to it. It's the oatmeal that they put in there, the barley that really gives this form, and then all the spices that they put in that add to its taste. So I would suggest trying it, just take a little sliver of it. Unless you're a vegetarian, I think you probably find that it's not as scary or as bad as you think if you get one that's bad. And I didn't really ever have any bad black pudding. It was just a little more mealy sometimes. So it's just something you got to deal with. The other thing they had that I did not see in Scotland is white pudding.

(00:50:30):
So what is white pudding? Well, imagine you made black pudding but you didn't put the pig's blood in. That's basically it. And then maybe a little bit more pork fat to give it some more substance. But I found the white pudding a bit more tasty than the black pudding was. But it's worth a taste. Like I say, it's a chance to understand a different culture. It's something that was popular a long time ago when in Ireland food was more scarce, but it's really just hung on and it's now just part of this full featured Irish breakfast. The number two thing that I learned about Ireland last week, I did a whole episode on driving on the left-hand side of the road. I'm going to be talking a little bit more Irish specific here. So Ireland roads can be a bit challenging, but they are doable. So let me give you some ideas here. First of all, motorways are the best roads in Ireland. Bar none. They are wide, they move.

(00:51:46):
It's just good condition for the road. You will find though that there are tolls and the M 50 in Dublin is the only one that they snap a picture of your plate and you need to mail in your money or pay it online. However, see if you can find out if you can get your car rental place to go ahead and take care of that for you. Because mine did, because they were getting into all sorts of squabbles with people who were renting from them that didn't know that they had to keep paying this toll. It was just a sign that says you're going through this thing, but there's no gate or anything. So it's just a surprise. And they have heavy fines for this sort of thing. So there's only one of those in the entire country and it's in Dublin on the M 50.

(00:52:37):
Otherwise you may bump into toll booths on some of the other roads that you're on. The other M roads, they warn you ahead of time. In fact, they warn you before the exit previous to the toll booth. So if you wanted to get off the road because you didn't want to pay the toll, you can do that. They give you ample warning for that. The cost generally, I was finding it was around two 90 in terms of euros two Euro 90. And so it's not overly expensive and it's convenient just to stay on these big motorways. So something to keep in mind there. No pull offs. This is so frustrating for somebody who loves to take pictures and see some of the most amazing scenery. I can't find a place anywhere to pull off. And so there's either a stonewall on the side of me, there's a big mound of earth or bushes and trees, just anything to keep you from any kind of a shoulder.

(00:53:41):
So shoulders on the roads are usually non-existent and they do have pull offs occasionally, but they're very few and far between. They also have less rules about single track roads. So people drive fast. Somebody told me before I went that there's a lot of unlicensed drivers in Ireland. Not sure if that's true or not, but they said that they don't really follow up on people so much after they get their learners' permit. So there's a lot of people who are driving around on learners' permits around, so they are licensed in a way, but not to be out there driving by themselves. But people still, overall, I found 'em to be very courteous. However, sometimes you're rounding a curve and they're going really fast. They're used to these roads, you are not. And we get used to these wide open roads in the us, they don't have those over there.

(00:54:31):
There's very few that are that spacious. So you're going to have a few hair raising moments probably while you're driving through there, but you should be able to get through it fine, I got through unscathed, it can happen. Okay, the road markings, they're a bit different. This takes some getting used to because we're used to in the US having a yellow line down the road, the middle of the road to signify that this is a bi-directional road. They don't have that over there. Instead they just have white lines that are dashed and separated by some distance and that means that you can pass. And then they have these longer dashes with very small breaks between them, which means there's no passing. So this is just something to get used to. And unfortunately when you're trying to get your bearings straight and cars are parking in either direction on either side of the road and it's always a white line down the middle of the road, it's hard to find visual cues to let you know which direction you should be driving in and if you are driving the proper way.

(00:55:40):
So can be tough, kind of get used to it as you go, and just be careful out there. Be careful out there. Alright, new road signs to pay attention to. H G V. I saw these initials all over the place finally. I sort of deducted what they meant, but it's heavy goods vehicle, so if you see it say no hgv, that's not talking about you unless you are driving a LRE full of apricots or something, I don't know. But that's really not something a tourist has to worry too much about. Concealed entrance, they're saying blind spot basically. And you'll also see black spot. I saw that a couple of times. So look out for black spots because sometimes these hedges up along the road, those people can't see out and they are going to be nudging their nose into the road. And my personal favorite is traffic calming. Yes, traffic calming. In other words, traffic is slowing because you're moving into a town. However, I just like the sound of that. We don't have calm traffic in the United States. We only have frenetic traffic. So to go to a place where traffic is calming, just it feels serene. So anyway, yeah, enough of that.

(00:57:07):
And how about your G P S? Well, I found in Ireland it wasn't always as helpful as I would like it to be. Oh, it always took me down a road. Lucy told me, be careful when you're driving around because sometimes G P s will take you down private use roads. I didn't find that so much. However, there were a couple of times when I looked down the road that it was about to send me on and because it recalibrates itself automatically if I miss it turn, I just went ahead and passed by that particular road because it looked not too inviting. And usually that's because it looks like you're going down a cobblestone street one way with trees darkening the path. It doesn't look like a place that I really want to take my car. So use your best judgment when you're doing that.

(00:57:59):
But understand G P Ss sometimes would bypass a major road that could have gotten me there in a decent amount of time, maybe a little longer than going down this single track road that I had to drive for 12 miles and deal with trucks coming at me. Just like I say, use your best judgment, maybe review a route that you think is right before you go. And then when G P S feels like it's pulling you too far off track, then just recalibrate and go to the direction that you feel most comfortable. Pump and pay. I found everywhere except one town that I was able to pump my gas first and then pay, which is really nice. We don't do that much here in the US anymore, but you do if you're using a credit card, have to sign. So you will have to go in.

(00:58:52):
You can't just pay at the pump and be done. You're going to have to go inside and gas prices very unpredictable while you're there. So I try to give you some ideas of when you're near towns it's going to be less expensive or if you're out in the middle of nowhere or this section of the island, it just doesn't matter. It's different all over the place. Nothing really predictable there. And then the last thing is just be careful in towns because you may run into a roundabout, it just may come up on you and you'll realize you're in the middle of it. The roundabouts in little towns can sometimes be a little bit hairy. But listen to my previous episode, if you want all about that kind of stuff and single track roads, I go into that quite a bit. And would I take a bus, a train, or a bike instead of driving, everybody was advising me to ride a bike.

(00:59:45):
I might have to talk to Keith and Gabrielle about that because I kept looking thinking there's no pull offs on these roads. There's tree lines up to the edges and there's cars whizzing down the road and you have to wear these yellow vests when you're riding your bike. So you're pretty clear and easy to see. But it just sometimes felt like, I don't know. I mean, yes, I'd be getting some great photos that I wouldn't be able to get from my car, but then just, I don't know, it just seems like it's a little crazy out there. But again, to their experience, they did it successfully, had fun doing it, bus and train. Well, if you're just going to go to towns, sure, why not? That's a cool way to go. But as number one on my list, we'll show you. You're going to miss a lot. So let's get to that number one item.

(01:00:37):
Drum roll please. And number one, the number one thing I learned about Ireland on my trip there. And this really was number one because it was something that I just did not anticipate. We've all seen the beautiful pictures of Irish shorelines and the cliffs of more and the cliffs of Kerry. And it's just like you see these pictures and you go, yeah, I want to go to Ireland. That just looks beautiful and green and lush. But what I didn't understand was that when I was driving around the ring of Kerry, there were these huge mountain ranges rolling right along with me and just incredible views wherever I went. And right down to the water. And seeing these beautiful beaches with the turquoise water, it's just absolutely gorgeous. So that's why I'm posting pictures on my Facebook page and also on travel fuels life.com where I'm doing these blog posts about these different places because I can't explain them.

(01:01:46):
I really can't. And some of the driving was really fun. There were places like Glen Gareth heading towards the ring of Carey where there was these incredible views and a couple of stop off places that you could take some pictures and these winding roads that sometimes went from great condition to kind of rough condition, but that were just fun to drive, that kind of thing. And then I got up to a place called the Kaha Pass and it got a bit rougher up there, but still these amazing sweeping views of the water and the mountains and the green, and it's just absolutely fantastic. And the dwellings, it just felt like you were passing by history everywhere that you went. There's no billboards. Thank you for not having billboards. Right. Nothing blotting your view as you're riding along. And no vinyl siding anywhere that I saw, just stone, plaster and wood.

(01:02:45):
It was gorgeous and I just enjoyed every single moment of it. And if there's one thing that I could recommend to you. We talked about hiking the way in Spain. When I got up to the Cliffs of Moore, I realized that the walkway continued and there was a there that said that you could walk the wild Atlantic way. Well, the Wild Atlantic Way rolls around Ireland on the shore, and you can drive it, you can hike it, you can ride it. It's just a beautiful, beautiful shoreline that Ireland has. And so that might be something that you consider is maybe it's time to go hiking the wild Atlantic way. I mean, it's just incredible. I can't say enough about how beautiful it was. And then I was talking to people along the way and they were saying, man, if you go to Northern Ireland and go along the Giants, Causeway, incredible scenery.

(01:03:44):
So Ireland truly has a ton to offer. Mountains, landscapes, ocean views, cliffs. It's just absolutely incredible. So three days was definitely not enough. And then that extra day in Dublin and in terms of Dublin and whether I could do it in one day, I did a lot. I'll do a blog post on it. It's probably going to be a couple of weeks away. But when I post that, you'll see some of the places that I went to. You can do a quick walking tour and see quite a bit. And I went to the Guinness Storehouse on top of that. But there's so much more of Dublin that I need to see. And so I will have a trip back there someday and I'm going to probably thoroughly enjoy it as much as I enjoyed just the few days that I had there. So Ireland, fantastic. Go see it. Enjoy. And I hope the information that I imparted today encourages you to go and helps you along the way to get the most out of your experience.

(01:04:51):
Well thanks everybody for listening to another week of Travel Fuels Life. If you want more information about Ireland, I've got a suggestion. Check out travel fuels life.com and just do a search on Ireland or look through all my blog posts. You can see lots of different posts that I did on the ring of Carrie, and I mean, it's just the whole Wild Atlantic Way. Dingle. There's so many places that you could check out in Ireland. So go to travel fuels life.com and you'll find all my blog posts there. And I'm going to be talking about Scotland coming up in the future episode. So make sure that you are subscribed to the show through your favorite podcast app and jump on twitter.com/travel fuels life to ask me any questions a like about Ireland and I'll be glad to fill you in. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.