After our 6 a.m. wakeup call and the last of our daily cappuccinos and cornettos, croissant-like rolls that are the nearest the Romans have to a universal breakfast food, Dana and I got bussed out to the airport. We had annoying Irish kids on our flight; the girl next to Dana put a handful of Maltesers in an empty Pringles can and shook it until her Dad told her not to, whereupon she laughed at him, he did nothing and she resumed shaking. Across the aisle, the ADD-racked boy sitting next to me kept quoting a line he claimed was from The Simpsons but which I’d never heard (and now can’t recall) while he opened and shut the windowshade until I wanted to reach over his ineffectual mother and punch him in the neck.

Back in Ireland, we were greeted by a downpour, then gorgeous sunny skies only minutes later, in the grand mercurial fashion of the country. I got a pint of Guinness with Dana at her house’s favored pub, Granger’s, shortly after which I shipped back out to the airport for my six-hour-plus return flight to JFK.

My gift from Aer Lingus was a half-full plane upon which I could stretch out and sleep. I discovered that I require the width of three seats for this purpose; or, expressed as an algebraic equation, 3s=J. There was a jackass family on this flight, too, with three kids that kept running around as if their brains were being bombarded by prions, while their father, a large tattooed meatsack whose neck was the diameter of my waist, shouted unheeded advice from his seat in a gravy-thick New York accent.

The travel may have been rough, but the vacation itself was, as they say, molto bene.

Our department has some hardcore Irish in it so celebrations are aplenty on St. Patrick’s Day. Even at work, it’s a daylong feast of food, decorations and silly hats.

I was directed today to bring in food tomorrow so I emailed Dana in Dublin to get an authentic Irish recipe for “cookies or bread type items.” She responded with this one, supplied by an actual Irish lady who made it for Dana and her housemates.

I converted the heathen Celsius and metric system measurements to American and discovered that the recipe’s original call for “caster sugar” is the same as superfine sugar. (Then I found actual caster sugar at an Upper West Side grocer and bought it even though it was $7 for a pound bag.) Also, the original recipe called for butter but didn’t say what to do with it other than spread it on the finished slices; instead, I melted it and threw it on the dough before baking to enhance taste and browning.

Initially I was concerned that the recipe didn’t contain any baking soda as I thought soda bread would, but a hasty Google revealed three things:

1. Both baking powder and baking soda are leavening agents, which make bread rise.
2. Just like meatloaf, everyone and her mother has her own recipe for soda bread.
3. The reason you cut a cross in the dough is to let the fairies out.

I found other soda bread recipes with baking powder and not baking soda, baking soda and not baking powder, and some with both. Some had eggs, some didn’t. Some skipped out on the sugar. Others insisted on caraway seeds. And there were many passionate bids for specific dried fruits. I chose an even mix of Zante currants and unsulphured dried apricots, which I diced and floured so they didn’t stick together.

Other than the buttering, I stuck to the recipe and I think it was a success. It resulted in what resembles a small UFO-sized scone, which isn’t a bad thing by me. We’ll see how it survives a subway journey downtown and the judgment of my coworkers.

Let’s start an annual tradition, shall we?

The smiles are genetic. The glasses too, possibly.

I went out for a short spell with my mom to see if we could capitalize on any post-holiday sale specials. We drove out to Beachwood Place and Golden Gate Plaza in Mayfield Heights. True to my fashion, I only ended up buying some used CDs at the Half Price Books at the Plaza, where everything in the store was 20% off.

For dinner, my mom made meatloaf using one of the KitchenAid silicone loaf pans I got her for Christmas. They’re the consistency and comical red color of a clown’s rubber nose, but the time-tested recipe turned out great. I’ve seen and heard that a lot of kitchen utensils and wares are now made from silicone, but I read a level-headed mini-report in Consumer Reports that mentioned there really aren’t all that many true benefits to using silicone. I suppose you get easier release on your muffins if you bake them in silicone trays, but you still have the usual prep time, cooking time and cleanup.

After dinner, we retreated to the living room, where I built a cheery fire, we uncorked some wine, and watched a terrible episode of CSI: Miami. The wine helped dull that pain a bit, but not too much.

Dana called to tell us that in honor of St. Stephen’s Day, she willingly ran into the ocean. There’s no telling what those crazy Irish people will do next.

A Reuters story posted on September 19^th that I came across today serves nicely as a nexus of my job (real estate), my apartment search (little space; lots of money) and Dublin, where my sister lives.

10-foot-wide shed sells for $269,100 in Dublin

Startling price for tiny structure highlights Ireland’s real estate boom

DUBLIN, Ireland—A former tool shed built to fill a gap in the middle of a row of Victorian houses in what was once Dublin’s poorest district has found a buyer at a startling price of $269,100 (220,000 euros).

At 10 feet wide and with a floor space of 280 square feet the building was last sold for 500 Irish pounds ($777) in the 1970s.

The red-brick house has no garden and no ground floor windows.

The realtor selling the property said on Monday a sale had been agreed but declined to comment further.

The price tag raised eyebrows even in Ireland where the cost of homes has tripled between 1997 and 2004.

It sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Dublin may not leap to the average person’s mind when he’s thinking of the world’s costliest rental rates, but it ranks highly. Another exmple: According to a study issued last October by international brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield, real estate on Grafton Street in Dublin is the world’s fifth most expensive, after London’s Oxford Street, Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, the Champs Elysés in Paris and, of course, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass....

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, (1900)

They went on between high hedges of clipped beech and up a steep winding path amidst great bushes of rhododendron in full flower to the grey rock and heather of the crest. They stood in the midst of one of the most beautiful views in the world. Northward they looked over Ireland’s Eye and Lambay and the blue Mourne Mountains far away...

H.G. Wells, Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education (1918)

I’d avoided reading a paper since I got here since, hey, it’s vacation and no use fretting over events, but this morning over breakfast, I took a look at the Irish Independent, the country’s best-selling broadsheet newspaper. One of the top news stories Ireland has been obsessing over has been that of Dolores McNamara, who won 115 million euro in Europe’s largest lottery, instantly becoming Ireland’s seventh-richest person. Quoting her solicitor, a story in the paper dismissed reports that she “planned to buy soccer star Michael Owen’s villa in Spain or a pub in Turkey” and in fact was staying put in her modest Limerick home. I guess somebody has to like that grubby town.

After breakfast, Dana made us some sandwiches and we set out for the Cliff Path, which wraps a few miles around the Irish Sea to the town of Howth. As we hiked up, down and around the steep path, we watched the tide roll in.

Along the way, we saw ancient ruins, lighthouses, beaches, birds, wild raspberries and blackberries, and, in Howth’s bay, Ireland’s Eye, an island on which stands the remains of a tower and an eighth century church. These days, it’s a bird sanctuary and tourist destination. We paused on the Howth boardwalk to eat our sandwiches, then stopped for some Mauds ice cream, a popular Irish-made brand.

Before my flight back, we wanted to top off the day with a visit to Granger’s, Dana’s favored local pub and just a few blocks away from her residence. But it was closed; signs posted outside noted this was due to the death of Adam Finnegan, grandson of Hugh and Ann Grainger. We instead went to Granger’s rival pub, a few blocks in the other direction, and had a quick bit of Guinness before Dana drove me to the airport.

The flight back was uneventful, unless you count the lone woman laughing throughout the in-flight movie, Monster-in-Law.

Overall, I had a great time in Ireland and I’m grateful Dana did all the pre-planning and driving. It was a relaxing time in a fine country and I wouldn’t mind returning someday to see even more of its sights.

I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.

James Joyce, on his novel Ulysses

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle, quoted by The Guardian (February 10, 2004)

After breakfast at Dana’s, including coffee from the house’s brand-new coffeemaker, Dana and I spent the morning in downtown Dublin.

As I am a fan of art museums, we went to the National Gallery, where the highlights were Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, a masterwork of light and shadow painted when the artist was only 29, and Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter.

We browsed some thrift and record stores, and lunch was at Beshoff, Dana’s favorite fish-and-chips chain. That’s some greasy grub, but tasty.

Then it was off to the James Joyce Centre, a townhouse built in 1784 that now houses Joycean memorabilia, a research library and audio/visual materials on his life and works. Inside are enormous rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and the decorative pastel-colored plasterwork on the ceilings resembling frosting strung delicately atop a cake. The proprietors of the center admit a “rather tenuous connection” between the house and Joyce—at the turn of the 19th century, one Professor Maginni, a dance class instructor and flamboyant man-about-town, lived there. He was known to the young Joyce and pops up a few times in Ulysses.

I was interested in the extensive exhibit on the censorship of that novel, generally recognized as Joyce’s greatest. The censors dogged Ulysses when its first serialized segment appeared in a magazine in 1918, halting future installments by 1920. The work was banned in the U.S. and in other English speaking countries making it a hot potato among the world’s major publishers. Undeterred, Joyce turned to his friend Sylvia Beach, who ran the Shakespeare & Co. publisher/bookstore in Paris (which I visited in 2004), and who agreed to publish the book—the first edition appeared in 1922. It wasn’t until 1934 that Ulysses was ruled not obscene and allowed into the U.S.

Dana pointed out a blurb on a Joyce timeline that I found amusing, given that I had, in my obnoxious editorial fashion, detected several highly public instances in Ireland confusing it’s and its. One was emblazoned in leaded glass at the Guinness Storehouse and I wondered if such apostrophe catastrophes were “an Irish thing.”

As the timeline anecdote goes, in 1939, Joyce’s last novel, Work in Progress was finally published as Finnegans Wake. “Although derived ultimately from the ballad about Tim Finnegan,” the timeline text notes, “the absence of an apostrophe coverts Finnegans into a plural and wake into a verb, so that the title may be read either as a statement or an exhortation.” Hey, or maybe some copy editor just fucked up. Then again, the whole of that book’s language is confounding.

Continuing our Joycean journey, we walked off for Guinness at Mulligan’s, a dark and friendly neighborhood pub that was already packed in the early afternoon with a mix of locals and yahoo travelers such as ourselves, who respected the vibe. Literary and journalist types drank there, including Joyce, who was a regular and liked it enough to reference the place in his short story “Counterparts” from Dubliners. According to Lonely Planet Ireland, Mulligan’s has the “best pour of Guinness” in Ireland and I must admit, it was good, but then, all Guinness there was damn good.

We decided to see a movie at the local independent filmhouse, the Irish Film Institute, and I picked 3-Iron, a South Korean movie directed by Ki-duk Kim, who also directed The Isle, which I saw and enjoyed on DVD in February. The conceit of a man who sneaks into other people’s apartments and homes while they’re out appealed to me. The guy never steals anything, just rearranges some stuff, maybe takes a shower, then photographs himself in the place and moves on. The movie turns unexpectedly, however, when he enters a house occupied by a woman with an abusive husband. That man’s 3-iron soon gets involved in a violent way, but not how you’re thinking.

The film started out reminding me of Raymond Carver’s short story “Neighbors” (a housesitter secretly and steadily integrates himself into his absent neighbors’ lives), evolved into a silent love story, and concluded in a dream-reality out of Haruki Murakami. The protagonist doesn’t speak a word of dialogue until the final minutes of the film, yet he’s highly memorable in his role. I don’t understand why it can’t be easier for American filmmakers to integrate such elements into their films to make them better, treating audiences intelligently and having them follow excitingly new, impossible-to-expect storylines and actions, instead of leading stock characters down plotlines that have been used and reused until they’re threadless and transparent. Anway, good show, Ki-duk.

The heavy-duty mysticism awoke in us a renewed craving for Guinness so we walked over to the Brazen Head, which I had read was the oldest pub in Dublin, and which Dana fairly warned me was “very touristy.” How touristy can it be, I wondered. Answer: very touristy. The “olde-style” facade and jutting flagpoles reminded me of Medieval Times, although I don’t think it was quite that bad. As it was nearing dinner time, most folks were eating in the outer courtyard, leaving the bar nearly empty for us and our pints. We reviewed the success of the trip to date and discussed the remainder. As a testament to the touristy-ness, taped-up dollar bills wallpaper the bar’s walls, each Sharpied with an autograph or a message, with lots of entertaining misspellings of Guinness. Speaking of which, on the wall, I spotted a handsome framed certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records that seemed to prove the “oldest pub” claim isn’t precisely true—it notes, “This is to certify that an inn has stood on the site of the Brazen Head Inn, Lower Bridge Street, Dublin, since the late 12^th century.” I’m pretty sure there’s still a designation between “inn” and “pub.” But I suppose the point is, if you head to the Brazen Head expecting restrained and ancient grandeur, you should instead go someplace like Mulligan’s, which has only been around since 1782, but which actual Irish people drink at.

By now we were hungry, so we ventured out from Dublin to Howth, to El Paso Restaurant for spot-on Mexican food and sangria.

A pint of plain is your only man.

Flann O’Brien (pseudonym of Brian O’Nolan), “The Workmans Friend” (1939). The Irish saying suggests that a pint of stout can solve all of one’s problems.

We spent most of today driving back to Dublin from Killarney. For lunch, I insisted on stopping at a Supermac’s, Ireland’s answer to McDonald’s. Not too bad. It’s more like a bunch of fast-food concepts rolled into one because in addition to burgers and fries, the menu includes “wraps,” fried chicken and pizza.

Back in Dublin, we took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. It’s not a tour of the brewhouse itself, presumably because such an enterprise would be impractical, but it’s a seven-story museum adjoining the factory. It’s new and modern with plenty of audio/visual highlights, like shuffling through a database of landmark Guinness commercials from the 1950s onward. Some exhibits were even olfactory, allowing you to smell, say, toasted hops.

I learned that Guinness is indeed made from local spring water, not Liffey water as apparently many a barkeep will deadpan. I enjoyed the Guinness ads from the 1950s, particularly the iconic cartoons of John Gilroy, who Walt Disney tried to poach for his animation studios at one point, according to the museum.

I wasn’t aware there was a connection between Guinness and the Guinness Book of World Records, but it was established by the managing director of the brewery to settle questions posed in bar bets. The specific question was “What’s the fastest game bird in Europe?” and the answer was the spur-wing goose (88 mph).

The most amusing anecdote to be found at the Storehouse details the hazing of new coopers at Guinness. The new guy would make his first barrel after which some senior coopers would stuff him inside, along with beer, water, wood shavings and anything else that might be lying around, then rolled him around town for a bit.

The high point, literally and figuratively, of the museum tour is the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, where you are presented with a free pint of Guinness and a near-360-degree view of the city.

We had dinner at Romano’s Restaurant, a nice place in a dodgy part of town; we had to get buzzed in to get a seat. For dessert, we went over to The Joy of Coffee, a Dana-favorite, for coffees and a shared slice of cake.

I walked up this morning along the slope from the east to the top of Sybil Head, where one comes out suddenly on the brow of a cliff with a straight fall of many hundred feet into the sea. It is a place of indescribable grandeur, where one can see Carrantuohill and the Skelligs and Loop Head and the full sweep of the Atlantic, and, over all, the wonderfully tender and searching light that is seen only in Kerry. Looking down the drop of five or six hundred feet, the height is so great that the gannets flying close over the sea look like white butterflies, and the choughs like flies fluttering behind them. One wonders in these places why anyone is left in Dublin, or London, or Paris, when it would be better, one would think, to live in a tent or hut with this magnificent sea and sky, and to breathe this wonderful air, which is like wine in one’s teeth.

John Millington Synge, from “In West Kerry,” In Wicklow and West Kerry (1912)

We had reserved today to drive the Ring of Kerry, a 111-mile circuit around the Iveragh Peninsula, and the weather could have been better. Mostly it was grey and drizzly but we still got to see many amazing sights.

Killarney is the most popular starting point of the ring, and we purposely set out on it clockwise, as all of the tour buses circumnavigate counter-clockwise. In other words, we decided we’d rather be startled by busses hurtling at us around blind corners than getting stuck behind them and unable to pass. I think it was the right decision.

We drove through Killarney National Park, a special conservation area heavy with forest. We came across a deserted church across the road from a waterfall under a stone bridge.

We were assaulted by a clout of gnats at Ladies View, a scenic vantage of the Lakes of Killarney and named so because of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting visit to the spot in 1861.

Outside Kenmare, we came across a bike accident, then some sheep in the road, but I don’t think the two were connected. Dana thought she saw a rainbow over a valley.

We got lunch at a place called the Village Kitchen in the Dr. Seuss-ish named town of Sneem. After we got back on the road, we were overtaken by some intensely thick fog the higher we climbed in the hills. We came then upon the town named Waterville, which Dana and I knew in advance we’d be stopping at, as it shares the name of the Ohio village in which we grew up.

The seaside village’s main claim to fame, I found out later, is that Charlie Chaplin and his family enjoyed the place and visited several times. On account of the intense mistiness, we didn’t go down to the beach to inspect Ballinskelligs Bay but got some snacks (an excellent scone for me and some warm apple pie with ice cream for Dana) and coffee at The Chédéan, a warm little bakery that sold bedraggled used paperbacks from a cart near the fireplace.

The fog made a comeback near Kells and on a sharp turn, we witnessed a car that had rolled onto its side, although no one seemed to have been injured. We made a few more scenic-view stops to better view the majestic green hills and valleys, goats, bridges and cows.

After our return to Killarney, we halfheartedly investigated an outlet mall near our hostel that appeared to have just opened. I noted that the usually fashionable Ben Sherman makes a line of regular, not-quite-so-fashionable broadcloth men’s dress shirts, which aren’t available in the states. We decided some pre-dinner pints were in order and picked a random pub for them, The 98 Bar. There we watched the end of the Chelsea/Arsenal soccer game, in which Chelsea won, 1 to 0, then caught some Simpsons reruns. Dinner was burgers at a place called Busy Bee’s.

Dana and I packed and left Galway this morning, but not before grabbing a “traditional Irish breakfast” at Lynch’s, a local cafeteria-style place recommended by the hostel’s front desk clerk. The breakfast reveals much about the pudginess of many Irishfolk: it’s comprised of toast, egg, thick Canadian-style bacon and a few fat sausage links, along with a fried tomato for extra heart-stopping power. (I had to return to the counter for jam, which wasn’t included and in fact was 20 cents per packet, causing me to horde free packets of Hartley’s throughout our trip, resulting in a fine collection that one of you may be receiving for Christmas.) So as not to add too much nutritional value to the meal, the orange juice was served in what appeared to be a shot glass. It was hearty, to say the least.

Exiting Galway, we spied Dana’s favorite anti-drunk driving sign. In large letters it shouts “Impressing the Girls?” (Dana remembered it to read “Impressing the Ladies?”, which we agreed would have been much better.) Then there’s a giant color photo of a multicar wreck, the vehicles crumpled like stamped-down soda cans. Below that is the admonition “Drive Safely.” Signs like these, with alternate declarations and photos, are everywhere in Ireland, and they don’t exactly dispel the country’s myth of the belligerent drunk.

Another popular safely campaign I enjoyed was that each county in Ireland has giant signs promoting how many people have been killed on its roads during the past four years. Limerick, for example, boasted 75 dead. Why four years? To make the total more impressive? And why are these totals being promoted anyway? It didn’t seem an especially effective deterrent and remained a mystery to me. Dana in fact has a photographic collection of strange Irish signs, most of them over-the-top pictograms, like the “Don’t leave valuables in your car or else that guy from the ‘Ped Xing’ sign will bust in and steal them” sign and the “Don’t walk too close to the edge of the cliff, lest you hover momentarily in midair like Wile E. Coyote.”

On our winding path to Killarney, we stopped at a favorite spot of Dana’s, the secluded Fanore Beach, which boasts high dunes, open grassy areas dotted with a few campers’ tents, and a wide beach of low, rolling waves. It was low tide and some large rocks on the beach that appeared to be black were in fact the shells of thousands of tiny mollusks.

We lunched in Lisdoonvarna, known for its mineral spa and annual matchmaking festival, just like in that crappy movie. The recommended restaurant was closed for lunch, but a woman there graciously offered an alternate spot down the road that featured decent pub grub, the Roadside Tavern.

Aside from the dazed looking group of Asian tourists in the back room, there were just a few locals at the bar sucking down beers. The walls were plastered in old, shellacked postcards and the furniture was heavy and wooden, as it should be in a pub. The seafood chowder, with smoked salmon, mussels and whitefish, was hearty and delicious, and my toasted ham and cheese sandwich mystery ingredient was curry, which gave it an unexpectedly welcome tang, and helped perk up the mayonnaise, a condiment Dana tells me the Irish are most fond of. (Catsup, on the other hand, must nearly always be requested when one orders chips [French fries], and even then, it’s more a watery tomato soup.)

Then it was to the Cliffs of Moher, an attraction midway through an extensive renovation to make itself even more touristy. Although the cliffs are more than twice the height (more than 600 feet tall) as those of the Aran Islands and just as steep, there were even more tourists, possibly on account of it being a weekend. It wasn’t as windy and the element of danger was tempered by a low barrier near the edge that many folks took delight in stepping over for some near-death photos. There was also a paved sidewalk trail showing the way and lined with assorted buskers and merchants selling tacky crap.

For a break, we paused in Limerick. Despite its charmingly poetic name, we found it a dreary place, although not so much in the squalid sense that Frank McCourt described in Angela’s Ashes, but moreso in that it was teeming with consumerism. At its core is the soul-sucking Arthur’s Quay Shopping Centre, which is famous chiefly (for us, at least) for its parking garage and for containing the only public restrooms in the entire city. Having parked and peed, we checked out O’Mahony’s, billed as Ireland’s largest independent bookshop, and tried to get coffee at the guidebook-recommended Danny’s Coffee House, but it was closed, so I got a passable cappuccino at McDonald’s, which are just as obnoxious as those in the states, only with better accents.

In Killarney, we found Killarney Railway Hostel with some difficulty, having missed the butter stick-sized sign reading “Hostel” at the end of a small driveway between a church and a barber shop. As a motorist, you quickly find the Irish are polarized when it comes to street signage. Either they adopt a minimalist approach featuring no signage, inevitably when you really need it; or, it’s a case of “let’s see how many signs we can cram onto this pole,” in which case by the time you decipher the pointy thicket of directional data, you’ve passed your turn and are on your way to Cork whether you like it or not.

After dropping our bags in our hostel-requisite spartan-but-servicable private room, we had dinner on High Street at D’Tandoor, a fine Indian restaurant, where I ordered and enjoyed a mango lassi and sag paneer with saffron rice.

Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.

W. B. Yeats’ advice to John Millington Synge (1896). Synge followed Yeats’ advice and wrote The Aran Islands. (1907)

The complimentary breakfast at our hostel’s large main kitchen area was comprised of an instant coffee machine, a small conveyor-belt toaster, stacks upon stacks of thick-cut white bread, many jars of jam, random Tetra-Paks of juice, and a huge group of perky young Europeans swarming about like it was tryouts for a Mentos commercial. Everyone was responsible for securing his own food and washing his own dishes when done. As soon as I dried my coffee cup, some guy snapped it up.

Invigorated by our bejammed toast, Dana slung the Punto into a coastal drive to catch the ferry to the Aran Islands. What began as what I would call a “scenic” drive quickly evolved into what I would call “hurtling” as we realized it was taking longer than expected to reach the ferry launch site.

We literally sprinted from our car then sprinted some more to the dock after the parking lot attendant told us we just might catch the 10 a.m. ferry. We didn’t, but there was one leaving half an hour later so it was no loss.

If motion sickness is not your bag, you will not want to take the ferry to the Aran Islands; a plane is your other option. The pitching and bobbing shook the breakfasts loose from several on board and there was the usual zombie-like lurching about from people who couldn’t find their balance, but the ocean motion soothed me. Our destination? Inishmór, the largest and northernmost of the three islands. Narrow and about nine miles long, it’s covered in green grass, cows and sheep, thatch-roof houses, beaches comprised more of soft, pulverized shells than sand, and perilously beautiful cliffs. An incredible maze of low walls, built from large, loose stones without mortar, map out grazing territory and property lines. It’s what you think of when you think of Ireland, only with more tourists.

Tour vans are lined up to ensnare tourists departing the ferry, the guides standing hopefully outside, and I told Dana to pick the weathered Irishman who she thought would offer the most entertaining commentary. Alas, our fellow, although he looked like a grandfather with yarns to spin, spoke about 10 brief sentences, most of them answers to questions Dana asked. We stopped at a 1300-year-old cemetery with seven churches. (“This is a 1300-year-old cemetery with seven churches,” the guide told us as we disembarked and he remained brooding in the van.) We also found out that about 800 people live on the island, most making their living off the tourism racket, and that although many of the thatched-roof huts on the island look romantically snug, only two of them are lived in. We stopped at one of these to take pictures and Dana pet the hut owners’ dog.

The highlight of the island was Dun Aengus, a fort-like stone enclosure atop sheer cliffs that plunge 300 feet into the Atlantic. (It’s the one from which Dana waved to me on Easter.) The site is especially marvelous in that there are no barriers to prevent you from falling, intentionally or otherwise, off the island, and Lonely Planet Ireland claims delightedly that tourists have been blown off the edge to their death by the high winds alone. We saw what appeared to be a park ranger standing off to the side but he wasn’t even trying to convince the backpacking Europeans to take a safe step back, merely casting a jaded eye over the scene like he wasn’t in the mood to firehose jellied tourist remains off the island base again. I crept close to the edge to take a few photos, but did so flat on my stomach. The experience was a rush, as if I was peering over the edge of the world.

I ended up losing my hat to the winds and although I’d like to tell you it was swept majestically into the ocean, nearly taking me with it, it in fact merely gusted off my head when I was standing nowhere near the edge, swiftly lofting over a rock wall onto a field that I probably could have retrieved by attempting to persuade the ranger.

Back off the tour van, we begrudgingly paid our useless guide, walked to check out a beach and a church ruin, then perused the overpriced woolen items in one of the many stores near the island’s main bay.

After the return ferry ride and the drive back into town, we supped at Nimmo’s, “one of Galway’s coolest, smartest tables—a place to see and be seen,” according to Frommer’s Ireland 2005, and a dark, cozy little place that’s set back from the hubbub of the main tourist streets. On account of all the cows I kept seeing on the trip to date, I ordered a really tasty sirloin, with some potatoes and salad and washed it down with a half bottle of cabernet sauvignon. Dana got the clams linguini which was delicious as well, she reported.

Ireland is where strange tales begin and happy endings are possible.

Charles Haughey, London Daily Telegraph (July 14, 1988)

Dana collected me from the airport at about 6:00 a.m. local time. It was drizzly and we got some coffee at the airport before heading back to her house in Baldoyle, where I got a quick tour. Then Dana and I took a bus to the city center section of Dublin, where we checked out Trinity College, St. Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square Park, the pricey shops on Grafton Street, and walked along the Liffey. For lunch, we ordered homemade soup at the Soup Dragon, one of Dana’s favorite restaurants downtown.

Back to Dana’s place, one of her housemates dropped us back at the airport so we could pick up our rental car, a spunky blue Fiat Punto with yellow Northern Ireland plates, a missing wheel cover in the front and some cigarette burns on the driver’s seat. Other than that, it was in ship shape and of an appropriately tiny size to navigate the perilously narrow Irish country roads.

We set off immediately for Trim Castle (also known as King John’s Castle), which actor/director Mel Gibson used for exteriors in his 1995 film Braveheart.

They’re not keen on Mel there. The village thought it’d receive some nice publicity from the ordeal, but was subsequently forbidden from using photos, video or descriptions from the shoot or the finished film for promotional purposes. In kind return, our castle tour guide, a slight, animated old woman with white hair, relished in detailing some of the film’s gross historical and geographical inaccuracies.

She fit the soft-voiced, sweet old lady type personified by, say, Ellen Dow, yet she was also keen on topics such as beheadings. Some skulls had been recently unearthed on the castle’s site, she told us. Evidence suggested, she related a might too cheerfully, that the persons to which the heads had been previously attached were being punished for some especially heinous wrongdoing, as the blades used for the task were purposely dull to inflict more pain. The heads were then festively displayed on pikes outside the castle to deter future transgressions, she noted.

I nearly took off my own head when I whomped it on a particularly low doorway at the bottom of a steeply winding stair.

Tour Guide: Did you hit your head?
Me: Yeah, but there’s not much in it, so I’m OK.
Tour Guide [quite seriously]: Well, that’s the way it was in Norman times—attackers rushing in would hit their heads on the doorframes.

The castle’s keep, which was erected around 1200, is impressive. Most of the tall, 20-sided building remains, although inside, the second and third floors are missing and replaced by modern catwalks zigzagging across the open space. The marvelously sunny day took a powder as we reached the roof, when it suddenly became dark and drizzly, although in true Irish fashion, it had all cleared up 10 minutes later as we were leaving.

After a rollicking cross-country drive, we arrived in Galway and checked into our hostel, Sleepzone. Although it offered dorm-style rooms typical for hostels, Dana booked us a private two-bed room, spartan but clean and comfortable.

For dinner, we tried to get into this restaurant that specializes in potatoes with crazy toppings, but it was so packed and it was so late that we were denied entrance. We ended up trying out a Mexican restaurant that was quite good and had brightly colored tables, chairs and walls.

We then chose a random pub and Dana bought me my first Guinness in Ireland. As a regular drinker of “the black stuff” in the U.S., I can report it’s much better in Ireland. First, it’s richer. The head is thicker and creamier, like a lather in consistency, and the rest is more fully bodied: rich and “dark” tasting, with a slight but pleasantly bitter cocoa taste. Comparatively, in the U.S., Guinness often has more of a sweetly “sticky” taste and smell. The head is anemic and disappears halfway though the pint, whereas in Ireland, there’s deliciously goppy remnants of cream left in the glass after the beer proper is quaffed.

I’d wager the Guinness is better for at least three reasons. (For more on this subject and other entertaining facts, read the excellent Guide For The Un-Initiated To Buying Guinness In An Irish Pub.) First, they pour it correctly here—with skill and patience. In the U.S., it’s often rushed into the glass and served prematurely.

Second, it’s arguably “fresher” in Ireland, having not had to travel very far from the source, thereby avoiding extended stays in transport vessels and warehouses.

Finally, in Ireland, Guinness is made with tasty local spring water. I’d think that in the U.S., it’s brewed with local water (probably from Canada, since Guinness isn’t made in the U.S.), resulting inevitably in a different, inferior taste.

Having forced myself to stay awake all this time in order to adjust to the five-hour time difference, I slept the sleep of the dead.

Weary? He rests. He has traveled.

James Joyce, Ulysses

My flight to Dublin was out of JFK at 6:00 p.m. although the plane ended up driving around the runway for a spell, then took off 45 minutes late. Being Aer Lingus, there seemed to be a lot of actual Irish people on the flight, which was jam-packed full.

I sat next to a bejeweled grandmotherly type named Filomena who as near as I could tell was from New York but was born and raised in Ireland and was on her way there for an annual vacation. She liked talking. I tried to ignore her by pretending to read my magazines but she kept tapping my shoulder with her French tip nails. My neck ended up hurting from having it turned in her direction to listen to her.

I learned of Filomena’s many dislikes: scandalously dressed young people, black people in general, parents of rowdy children, rowdy children in general, the war in Iraq (no conversation between an American and an Irish person is complete without addressing U.S. politics), the hooligans I would no doubt encounter in Dublin at night, and how today’s pop music is wicked and depraved. I was amused that she chose to illustrate this last point with Stevie Wonder. “Every time that man sings, he’s on drugs of some sort,” she confided in me, noting that when she was a teen, she saw him perform in the West Village and even then, “he was stoned.” Stevie Wonder! Ha ha!

She eventually got distracted by the in-flight movie although she claimed her headphone jack wasn’t operational so she had to use mine. A bit later, she complained to a flight attendant about how cold it was on the plane, wrapped a blanket around her head like a turban, then nodded off for a bit. Later, she bought a bottle of Bailey’s from the duty-free cart. When we touched down in Dublin, it was cool and rainy. I was glad to be footloose and Filomena-free in Ireland at last.

I’m a-leavin’ on a jet plane. And I do know when I’ll be back again: next Thursday. I’m flying out of New York tonight to visit my sister in Ireland, so blog entries might be slow coming, sketchy or non-existent, depending on internet access and my free time. If nothing gets posted in the next seven days, however, don’t fret, because I’ll be keeping notes of my exploits and will eventually crank out full-fledged, post-dated entries when I return.

My sister Dana, who shipped off to Dublin last October for a two-year volunteership, has been asking me to visit. I was partially impeded by the fact that my 10 vacation days don’t kick-in until mid-June, but Dana and I discovered we were both free in August—she gets most of the month off and I shouldn’t be too busy at work because we don’t produce any conferences in July or August.

So I broke down today and booked my flights on Aer Lingus. I’ll be arriving in Dublin at the asscrack of dawn on August 18, then flying back to New York late afternoon on August 24. I think I got a good deal on my flight and I’ll be staying for free in the guest quarters of the house Dana lives in.

If you’ve been to Ireland, feel free to recommend some interesting things to do there. Before scrutinizing tour books or the internets, here’s a temporary list of possible activities.

• drink at some pubs, including the oldest one in Dublin, the Brazen Head
• investigate a famous Dublin-born writer’s house, perhaps Wilde, Joyce or Yeats
• tour a castle
• go to an art museum
• check out Trinity College
• eat at some of Dana’s favorite local restaurants
• visit the Aran Islands (although they’re all the way on the other side of Ireland from Dublin)

Dana emailed me some photos of Mom and Dad that she took on Sunday. They’re visiting her in Dublin and report the Guinness does taste better (or at least “different”) than it does in the U.S.—even Mom drank most of a pint.

Dana shared some great photos she took while on a recent retreat to Northern Ireland.

According to legend, if you were to jump into the Atlantic from Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, then swam perfectly west the whole time, you’d eventually hit New York City. So on Easter, when Dana was on Inishmore, she made sure she waved to me.

Incidentally, if you were to jump into the Atlantic from Inishmore, you wouldn’t likely survive the sheer 300-foot drop.

“Amazingly, you can walk right up to the edge,” Dana writes. “In America, they would have destroyed the natural beauty and put up fences everywhere. But not here in Ireland, where you can essentially just walk off the cliff.”

Today, Dana emailed me the first of her photos from Ireland!

Here she is last weekend in Dublin, by the River Liffey. She was hanging out there with an assistant from a neighboring L’Arche, Govinda, who is from Nepal (and who took the photo). After they fed a lone pigeon a piece of the sandwich they were eating for lunch, they were suddenly swooped upon by a ravenous pack of seagulls, just like in The Birds. Apparently, they are OK (Dana and Govinda, that is; the seagulls are probably OK, too, and dive-bombing some German tourists in Cork as you read this).

Dana further enjoyed her first official weekend off work by sightseeing, catching some movies (After The Sunset and Comme Une Image), and drinking plenty of pints, both at pubs and at the full bars located inside the theaters that are apparently common in Ireland.

Dana sent her first email to me from Ireland on Oct. 31, but I thought you might enjoy hearing from her as well, so I got her permission and I’m reprinting it below. It’s great to hear she’s doing well and funny to read about her adventures and some of the cultural differences she’s encountered. I don’t plan on making a habit of posting her emails because I don’t want her to have to take that into consideration whenever she writes me; but more importantly, I think it’s a great reason for her to start her own blog.

How are you?? Just writing to let you know I survived my travels to Europe. I am currently safe and snug in my new home in Ireland. I spent my first few days in Geneva, Switzerland. The flight there was pretty uneventful.. except of course the woman sitting next to me that kept flopping into me every time I would be on the verge of sleep! The orientation coordinator that met me at the airport was quite the slave driver.. she spent the first day keeping me awake.. we saw some sights in the city but I only remember a small portion of all the history she was going on about because I was seriously sleep deprived! The coolest thing we went to was an old cathedral where we could climb to the top of the tower and get a pretty nifty birds-eye-view of the city. I managed to stay awake until 10 pm and didn’t get out of bed until 10 am the next day!! The rest of my time spent in Switzerland was in her office being pumped full of more information. My flights to Dublin via the Heathrow airport in London were a little more exciting because I got drilled by immigration officers in both airports.. it was pretty intense.. I seemed to always get in the line of the officer that was either having a bad day or on a power trip. I finally was allowed to enter Dublin with a one month temporary visa and I will need to register with the Garda (police) to get a resident card. Crazy.

My house is really beautiful!! The building itself is very large.. it was purpose built with wheelchair users in mind... so the hallways are extra wide, some of the counter tops were built low to the ground.. this actually works out nice for shrimp like myself:) Three of the four core members (what the “residents” are called in L’Arche) are in wheelchairs. I am one of five assistants.. and we are a diverse crowd.. one woman is from Mexico, while another is from Germany, one of the men is from Poland, while the other is from California. Also living with us is a handyman that also comes from Poland. The diversity is awesome! Plus we seem to have a steady stream of visitors.. and we often interact with the other house which is just down the street.

My responsibilities have not yet been clearly defined. They told me to take the first week off so I can recover from jet lag and so I can observe the habits and routines of the house and the core members. I am on information overload in that respect.. so many things I am trying to learn about and it is not easy to do when your body is still tired and adjusting from the time zone switch (5 hours). One thing that is clear is that I will be learning how to drive all over again. They drive on the other side of the road here and they all drive manual cars (which I have only driven twice in the States!) Wahoo.

I have done a little exploring.. but not much.. it does rain a lot here!! There is a little shopping area that is with in walking distance.. it has a couple banks, little shops, a coffee place, and some pharmacies. Plus I am told it is pretty easy to use the bus and the DART (train) systems here. I am a block from the ocean... I can see the “eye of Ireland”. I am also close to a library that also has internet access and a meager selection of books. I have a feeling I will have much more time to do e-mail this first week. But like anything else I’m sure it will be easy once I have a set routine.

One thing I for sure will have to keep you updated on is the difference in language here.. I am sure you will be amused by this. Of course English is generally spoken here but there are some different uses for words. For example.. I was “collected” at the airport (you don’t say “picked up” unless you want to imply a more sexual connotation). Another one that I was warned about was that we wear “trousers” here (pants is another word for underwear... so if I told someone I liked their pants.. that could lead to an embarrassing misunderstanding!).

Great news on the family front! I was notified simultaneously today by an email and a letter in the mail from Dana confirming that she’ll be traveling to Dublin, Ireland to live and volunteer at a house for mentally handicapped adults. She’s been at an orientation in Maryland the past two weeks, unsure of where in the world she’d be placed (kind of the way the Peace Corps works, as I understand it), but she had her heart set on Dublin—and got it!

She’ll be back at our parents’ house in Cleveland through Oct. 24, then flying to Switzerland for another brief orientation, then off to Ireland. She’ll live for at least a year (or is it two?) at what’s called a L’Arche, which is like an assisted living community. (I’m pretty sure that this is a link to their site.)

Dana’s the magnanimous kid in the Young family and this kind of work is, as she says, right up her alley. It’s what she’s wanted to do, having studied and volunteered for social work in college, and being an all-around great listener, teacher and easy-to-get-along-with person. I’ll miss her a lot but I’m glad and proud that she’s making her big exit from the world of college to the real world doing something she loves. Congratulations, sis!