Oh, Look. More Sheep

I suppose it’s time to write about our Ireland trip. My bizarre conclusion: I would rather live there than visit as a tourist. The climate is mild. The landscape is beautiful. It’s safe. The people are wonderful. The cost of living is lower than it is here. You could probably grow your own food there. On the other hand, there isn’t much to do in Ireland.

As I have said before, I was not interested in seeing Ireland. I have a relative who thinks she is Irish, and she was very excited about visiting Ireland with her family. Sadly, she has nearly no Irish blood. My genealogy, which includes her genealogy, is available online, and I’ve seen it. There are probably recent immigrants from Somalia who have more Irish blood than we do, so I have no connection to the country. The only reason my wife and I visited Ireland was that the Irish were very nice about allowing her in. We really wanted to go to places like Israel, Switzerland, Greece, and Italy.

My mother had the same faux-Irish delusion. It’s common among Americans. I don’t know why people want to be Irish. Seems like every American wants to be Irish or American Indian.

If we had been going to Israel, I would have known exactly what to do. Stay in Jerusalem. Visit the sights. See Yad Vashem. Visit Jericho, the Dead Sea, Capernaum, Mount Hermon and Caesarea Philippi, see the kibbutz where I stayed…easy. Ireland…different. It’s one of those countries where nothing has ever happened, so it’s hard to think of things to do and see. I planned the trip by guesswork.

We went to Dublin. After that, we stayed in Salthill, which is just outside Galway. Then we stayed in Dingle. Then we spent a night on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands. Finally, back to Dublin.

Dublin was not great. I would say it’s like Philadelphia. By that I mean it’s a lot like New York, only without the positives. It’s a big city full of American businesses like Burger King and Circle K. It’s packed with immigrants, so it’s barely Irish. We interacted with Nigerians, Spaniards, people from little Eastern European countries that kind of seem Russian, Pakistanis, Thais, and Italians. I would say the Irish made up about half of the folks we dealt with. We heard lots of Spanish, which is disturbing to anyone who has been scarred by years in Miami.

I can only think of a few things to see in Dublin, and we didn’t see any of them. The Guinness brewery, the Irish whiskey museum, the immigration museum, Trinity College Library, and the Book of Kells.

The brewery, which is not actually a brewery, is probably fun. We just didn’t get around to it. I didn’t visit the whiskey museum because Irish whiskey isn’t all that good. Scotch is on another level, and expensive bourbon is also better. I didn’t know the immigration museum existed until it was almost time to fly home. As for the library and the book, it’s hard to get excited about such things. I’ve been in big old libraries. Nice, but not worth buying tickets. My understanding is that you only get to see two pages of the Book of Kells, and neither of us thought that was a bucket list item.

Let me digress back to Guinness. The Internet says Guinness brews all over the world, and the US used to get its draught Guinness from Canada. Then Diageo took over and started selling Irish Guinness in the US again. Bottled and canned Guinness are not always from the same locations as draught. I can’t find out where the Irish brewery is. I would guess they moved it out of the big, expensive city, and they don’t want anyone to know.

What about the food in Ireland?

We had a surprising amount of bad food in Dublin. I thought they would make excellent fish and chips, but they don’t. Long John Silver’s is way, way better. I have had fish and chips in Ireland and at Long John Silver’s, and Ireland can’t compete, so if you want to find out what good fish and chips taste like, head to your local drive-through. Maybe the English do it better, but American fast food fish and chips beat all the Irish fish and chips I tried.

Most places in Ireland use frozen potatoes, and we all know how those taste. We tried a couple of places that breaded their fish. One did a great job. The breading was dry and seasoned perfectly. The other, Beshoff’s, gave me fish that was not quite as good as the fish in a McDonald’s sandwich. We tried battered fish, and it was limp, oily, and not seasoned well. Only two places gave us acceptable chips.

I know it would upset many people to see me say American Guinness tastes just like Irish Guinness and that a lowly American chain makes better fish and chips than famous chip shops in Ireland, but these things are true, and delusion is a bad thing.

Wait till you read my opinion of Irish sweaters. You’ll be furious.

We tried a bakery called Bread 41. It gets rave reviews. It’s one of those places hipsters call “artisanal.” They take reservations for breakfast. They sell big loaves of great-looking bread, as well as breakfast pastries.

The web advises people to book in advance, but we walked right in. I ordered a croissant, pain au chocolat, and hot chocolate. The wife ordered a morning bun (whatever that means), a bun that had been cut in half and filled with pastry cream, and coffee.

The croissant looked fantastic, but it was very dark, and it tasted like burnt egg wash. A croissant should have a buttery, sweet, slightly salty flavor. Croissants are made with milk, butter, sugar, and salt. I didn’t taste what I should have. I didn’t finish the croissant. That’s really something, because I have managed to enjoy croissants from Walmart, Burger King, and a breakfast buffet in Egypt.

The pain au chocolat was like the croissant. The filling was nice, but it was way down in one end, so most of the roll was just a bad croissant.

The morning bun was very nice. The other thing Rhodah ordered would have been excellent, but it had a strange spice in it. Something you would expect to find in a sausage, not a pastry. It may have been sage. I don’t know. It ruined the bun.

The hot chocolate was tepid, and it tasted as though it had been made from water and spoiled milk. I later learned the Irish don’t make hot chocolate well, and they don’t seem to like really hot beverages, so I suppose my experience was normal. I only took a few sips because I was afraid I was drinking angry bacteria. I can’t recall ever failing to finish a hot chocolate before. I will even drink Swiss Miss.

The coffee was also tepid, resulting in a very annoyed wife.

Everything in the bakery looked magnificent, and the food was obviously prepared with great skill. The problem was that it didn’t taste good. These days, people are in love with presentation. Like I always say, you can’t taste presentation. It’s for people who can decorate but can’t cook. Is that code for “gays and women”? Not sure.

Yes, I am. It is.

A chef has to have a palate. He has to know what tastes good. The other nonsense is much less important.

We went to a breakfast place called Keogh’s and paid a lot of money for scones. They were cold and dry. How can Irish people not know how to make or serve scones? I believe cold scones are considered normal, because we saw them elsewhere, but they should not have been dry.

While we were in Dublin, we learned something shocking. Famous chef Marco Pierre White is a total fraud.

White is Gordon Ramsay’s former mentor and employer. He is probably the most respected chef on Earth. He’s all over Youtube, pontificating about food. He has had a ton of Michelin stars.

While we were looking for a restaurant which turned out to be closed, we saw another place with “MARCO PIERRE WHITE” on the awning in big letters. I could not believe it. He had a restaurant in Dublin? We had to try it, just for the experience.

Rhoda had salmon and chips. We shared a scallop appetizer. I had a rib eye steak and an Absolut martini.

It was disgusting, and it cost us about $200.

The chips were frozen, unless White has used his gift to find a way to make fresh ones taste that way. The rib eye was half an inch thick, cooked badly, and covered with some kind of brown gravy that tasted canned. The scallops were dry and tasted like they had been on site for a week.

They could not make me a martini. They tried twice. I kept telling them to add only a couple of drops of Vermouth, but every drink tasted like Vermouth lightly seasoned with warm vodka. Which was warm. Warm!

I later learned that White has a chain of restaurants. I guess they’re all disgusting. Maybe he can’t really cook at all. In any case, he clearly has no integrity. If he did, why would he put his name on a bad restaurant? Obviously, he knows it’s bad, unless he’s not paying any attention. Either way, he’s a phony.

Dublin is much more expensive than the rest of Ireland, for no good reason, so if you get bad food there, you will pay a lot for it.

Strangely, we found the Thai and Italian food in Ireland to be excellent. Also, we had McMuffins in Dublin, and they were very nice. Irish bacon is a lot like what we call Canadian bacon, so if you want a US-style McMuffin, your best option is called a Bacon McMuffin.

Incredibly, the Irish do not serve cream or half and half with coffee. They use milk, which is awful. If you want coffee with cream, you have to buy cream in a store and carry it around. I had a decaf at McDonald’s, and the milk took much of the joy out of it.

My wife has not been what I would call “rich” her whole life, so when we get together, we have to do catch-up shopping. I brought a lot of stuff for her in my luggage, and we also shopped in Dublin. The prices and quality were fine, for the most part. We learned that Henry Street is a good place to look for things. There are also shops on Grafton Street, but the prices are jacked up for tourists.

Now that the subject of shopping has come up, let’s talk about Irish woolens. They are no good.

You may be amazed to see someone write that, because Ireland is famous for Aran Island woolens. Locals used to make heavy oiled sweaters for fishermen who worked out of the islands. Those sweaters were very good. The new ones are not. They are made for tourists, not fishermen.

The original sweaters were white, and they were oiled with lanolin to make them weather-resistant. The new sweaters come in all colors, they are generally knitted by machines, they have no lanolin in them, and they are so lightweight, they stretch and become useless.

There are sweater stores in every city and town in Ireland, selling the same things. The sweaters look fantastic until you hold them up to the light and see how thin they are.

The prices are alluring. You can get a gorgeous sweater for 65 Euros. The problem is that it will be a thin sweater. If you want a real sweater, think more in the range of 200 Euros.

If you look around in Ireland, you will see almost no one wearing Irish wool. They dress exactly like Americans. They wear warmup suits, basketball shorts, and so on. They look awful, just like we do. There is a reason why they pass those sweaters by. They know the quality is inferior.

Sorry if I’m bursting your bubble. Consider this an intervention.

The T-shirts they sell for tourists are also thin and useless. They’re like Kleenex. I couldn’t find a single one fit to give to a friend. The hoodies seem okay, which is hard to explain, given the poor quality of the shirts.

We stayed in an area near Trinity College, near a neighborhood called Temple Bar. Temple Bar, aptly, is named after The Temple Bar. Which is a bar. Tourists flock to Temple Bar to get drunk. It’s sort of like the French Quarter. A Youtube travel guy advises people, very seriously, to keep an eye out in order to dodge flying vomit. If you spend time in Temple Bar, you will see vomit on the ground and buildings from time to time. Apparently, the British use Temple Bar as a destination for pre-wedding parties, and we all know how well the British hold their liquor.

We didn’t see any obviously drunken people, but then we were always indoors pretty early.

I’m not exactly sure what people are supposed to do in Ireland, but I think they’re probably supposed to get drunk in pubs and sing. We saw a lot of signs advertising “good craic.” The word “craic” refers to drunken fun. Far as I can tell, you’re supposed to go to a pub, get a load on, listen to live music, and party with other tourists.

This is apparently a very, very important part of Irish tourist life. We saw references to it everywhere we went.

What if you don’t like partying with drunks? Then you’ll end up like us, in bed watching Judge Judy.

The Irish are obsessed with Judge Judy. Often, we found that her show was on three TV channels, simultaneously. They also seem to like Perry Mason.

Judge Judy is a nasty, rude old woman. It’s strange that the Irish would like her. We found the Irish to be extremely polite and patient. They were a joy to deal with. They reminded me of the people here in Northern Florida.

In the US, there are pretty much two Irish stereotypes. First, there is the coarse, violent, short-tempered, drunken, ill-mannered stereotype. Then there is the cute, witty, Leprechaun-like, Barry Fitzgerald-ish, also drunken stereotype. We didn’t run into people who fit the pigeonholes. I thought the Irish were wonderful people. I told Rhodah the French should be forced to visit Ireland for lessons.

Speaking of prejudices, we were told that the only way to distinguish the seasons in Ireland was by the temperature of the rain. We saw very little of it. We had one day when there were a few light showers. Other than that, we generally had dry, sunny days. I kept praying for God to keep it up so we would have a testimony, and as far as I can tell, he listened.

I think I’ll continue with this tomorrow.

I am back, even though only an hour has passed. I have restored my strength with delicious leftover Sicilian pizza.

Rhodah had a hair disaster in Dublin. She had a weave or something installed in Zambia, and by the time we got to Dublin, it was hurting her scalp. While we were struggling to eat at Bread 41, she saw a black woman, and she asked her where she got her hair done. This is how we ended up visiting the Nigerian lady on Moore Street.

Moore Street is pretty shady. It’s the only place we went where street crime was a serious possibility. Gypsies hang out in the general area, and they steal. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it’s true. The Nigerian lady with the hair shop told us the gypsies stole phones. One gypsy slaps your face, and another one grabs your phone while you’re in shock. Don’t blame me for being honest about gypsies. Their reputation is their own fault.

I’m old. I can say anything I want.

Before Rhodah got settled in to get her hair fixed, a young man had to be ejected from the shop. I thought he was Jamaican because he was wearing a lot of green, but later, I learned he was Nigerian. Nigerians like green because it’s in their flag. He was hopped up on some drug or other, and he was angry at people for no apparent reason. He smelled terrible, like he hadn’t showered in a week. The beautician ended up calling the cops on him.

At first, we were told it would take three hours to replace Rhodah’s hair, but in truth, she was there for 10. During that time, she got to talk to the beautician, and I got to wander around Dublin and sit in a hotel room.

It turned out the beautician was a fan of T.B. Joshua, Nigeria’s famous evangelist. He died unexpectedly last year. The beautician had had cancer, and she was healed through Joshua. That was interesting. My wife and I both enjoy his videos, although militant perverts got his main channel removed from Youtube because he cast a demon of homosexuality out of a man on camera.

While I was walking around killing time, I met Andrew. He was standing near a Starbuck’s I intended to visit, handing out pamphlets. Usually, I steer clear of anyone who wants to hand me anything, and sometimes I even say, “I don’t speak English,” in Russian, but I saw something interesting. He was holding a pamphlet about “the cashless society.” I decided to talk to him. I thought it was remarkable, seeing someone in Ireland who was concerned about the apocalypse.

Andrew is in his twenties. He is part of a sect that believes Christians should pool their wealth and live without working. At the time I spoke to him, he was living in a tent. He had coronavirus (something I didn’t learn until I had been standing too close to him for a while), but he said God had given him strength to get up and evangelize that morning.

His group has a website at this link, and he gave me a DVD and a pamphlet. Very interesting stuff.

I don’t think God has called on me to give everything I have to a fund for other Christians, and I’m not sure we should refrain from working, because as far as I know, the Bible doesn’t say those things are required. The New Testament specifically mentions Christians who are well off, and it doesn’t say they have to give everything away. It says we should treat our employers well, which is impossible for those who are not employed. Also, the believers in Acts who pooled their resources didn’t stop working. At least, Acts doesn’t say they did.

Paul worked.

I don’t believe everything Andrew believes, but I know what it is to live without money and rely on God, because I have done it. It works, and there are some very good things about it. I don’t plan to take that route again unless I have to, but I still wanted to find out about Andrew’s group. They are interested in the mark of the beast and the government’s efforts to control us and turn us into a big, filthy, fake family, and they also believe in prayer in tongues.

He said they took donations in order to survive. I told him I wanted to read the pamphlet before committing, so I took it and read it at Starbuck’s. Days later, during our time in Salthill, my wife and I watched the DVD.

Having read the pamphlet, I left Starbucks and found Andrew again. I thought his group was basically okay. I told him things I thought would be helpful. I told him how important it was to pray in tongues for long periods in order to be protected from deception.

The DVD contained two videos. One was about the mark, and the other was about human rights abuses. I felt the second video was about a political concern of limited relevance to Christians, so it didn’t do much for me.

The first video was interesting because in addition to telling people about the mark, it exposed a culture I knew nothing about. I know about preppers, but the video was about people who avoided using money, and that’s different. There is a culture of people who live simply, without jobs. They barter. They eat discarded food. They find all sorts of handouts most of us wouldn’t know anything about.

They have had fairs dedicated to their cause, and the fairs didn’t cost anything to produce. They used donated food, donated venues, and so on.

It doesn’t seem like a great lifestyle. For example, you can get free clothes and free food, but you can’t choose what you get, so you may end up wearing and eating things that aren’t your top choices. On the other hand, these people don’t fear the IRS. They don’t worry about credit. They don’t work soul-killing jobs. They aren’t trapped in a constant fight to impress others. They are free to go wherever they want at a moment’s notice. Provided they can find ways to get there without paying.

Here’s something fascinating about the video. The creators interviewed random street people in America and asked them about chips and the mark of the beast, and they knew more about it than most Christians. They didn’t want to be chipped. They said, correctly, that chips and cashless commerce were about control. So people who sit around smoking weed and asking for spare change know more about our times than most working people do. Sad.

When the mark rolls out, rejecting it will be easier for bums than it will be for the rest of us, because they will be used to living without being part of the system. They won’t have to choose between their membership in an affluent society and a cold turkey entrance into a faith-based way of life. I suppose the first will be last, and the last will be first, as Jesus said.

Andrew and the hair lady were not the only Christians we saw in Dublin. One night while walking to the hotel, we saw an African lady waving a pamphlet. I was afraid she was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I kept walking, but Rhodah stopped. I can’t teach that woman anything. The front of the pamphlet said, “Jesus said: ‘Behold I Come Quickly’ Revelation 22 v 7.”

The lady seemed shy, and I can’t recall her saying anything, but she was out on that corner anyway, handing out pamphlets to warn the world about the impending catastrophe. She was doing her duty. The pamphlet says her church is the Mountain of Soulution [sic] & Redemption Prayer Ministries Worldwide, in Dublin.

We ran into her on O’Connell Street, which is a huge tourist drag full of restaurants and bars. On another night, a group of young people accosted us farther down the same street, in front of a history museum. They handed Rhodah a pamphlet with a cross on it, announcing an April 15 gathering. A revival, I assume.

It surprised me to meet Christians in Ireland. I think of Ireland as a place full of post-Catholic leftists and freethinkers. I have always figured it was about like England, where Jesus is probably less popular than Jack the Ripper. The Irish are spiritual people, though, for better or worse, so I should not be surprised to find Christians in Dublin.

When our time in Dublin was over, I had to rent a car to get us to Salthill. The whole business of driving in Ireland was very interesting, to put it unnecessarily nicely.

I thought I was renting a Ford Focus, which is an okay car, but of course, the rental people gave us something weird instead: a SEAT Arona. SEAT is a Spanish company, and the Arona is a small hatchback.

The Irish love manual transmissions, so if you rent, you will find there are few automatics available. Also, they cost more. I learned to drive on manuals, so I thought manual would be fine. This was a big mistake.

The speed limits on Irish “roads” change very, very frequently, so if you have a stickshift, you will have to use it a great deal. Also, there are a lot of twisty roads with blind curves, so you have to do a lot of downshifting. Because the Irish drive on the wrong side of the road, you will have to shift with the wrong hand. Add it all up, and it spells “automatic.”

On top of all this, shifting gears in the Arona was like buying a lottery ticket. I was never quite sure what gear I would end up in. In an American or Japanese car, the transmission will help you, steering the lever in the right direction. In an Arona, you are about as likely to end up in 1st or 5th as you are to find 3rd.

The guy at the rental counter did me one big favor. He upgraded me to diesel without charging me. I had rejected the upgrade, because they charged 70 Euros. I think he felt I was making a bad choice. The nice thing about having a diesel was that it gave me a wide power band. There were long stretches where I could leave the car in 2nd or 3rd and not shift at all, regardless of how many curves I ran into. The motor wouldn’t stall.

The air conditioning wasn’t functional. The car had a little button labeled “A/C,” and it lit up when I pushed it, but it didn’t actually change the temperature of the air. I’m not sure the car actually had an air conditioning system. Maybe the button was just there to impress passengers and convince people the Spanish were capable of building air conditioners.

The road to Galway and Salthill wasn’t too bad, because a lot of it was four-lane divided highways. Staying on the wrong side of the road was challenging, however. More than once, I found myself looking into the grill of a distant car.

The rental guy told me not to worry about tolls because they would photograph my tag and let me pay on the Internet. It turned out this was totally false. I had to pay in cash every time, and if I wanted change, I had to have small bills. If you give the Irish toll people a 100-Euro note, the machine will consider your change a donation to the treasury.

Once we were out of Dublin, we realized how dumb it had been to spend 4 nights there. The countryside was much, much better. Granted, all of rural Ireland smells like manure, but my own farm has the same issue, and for country people, it’s not a problem. The landscape was green, rolling hills dotted with fat sheep, as far as the eye could see. It reminded me of Kentucky, especially as we got close to Galway. We both loved it.

I was surprised the country was so empty. Ireland has a very small population, because most of the Irish left a long time ago. Most of them are here in America, mixed in among the people who merely pretend to be Irish. I suppose Irish cities hold most of the remaining population. Europe is generally crowded, and Ireland is very small, so it’s strange to see big expanses of open land there. Rhodah said we should move there.

Land is not very expensive. I checked. In fact, everything in Ireland seems cheaper than it is in the US.

Not in Dublin, of course.

In Salthill, we rented a top-floor apartment in a building with an underground garage. We paid about what we paid in Dublin for one room. The apartment was a joy. We had two big bedrooms, a big living room, two outdoor terraces, a big kitchen, a dining room, and two baths. The whole place was sparkling-clean. We had cooking tools. We had laundry machines. It was bliss.

Salthill is a touristy area by the sea. Touristy or not, I loved it. There were good restaurants a few feet away from the apartment, and we didn’t have to deal with Galway traffic. We also found another Nigerian hair lady to repair the repair the Dublin Nigerian lady did. The hair we got in Dublin didn’t suit Rhodah, and when it got wet, it left black stains on things.

Nigerians are everywhere. There is probably one within 100 feet of you right now, waiting to sell you something.

From Salthill, we drove to see the Cliffs of Moher. This is probably Ireland’s biggest tourist site. When you Google day trips from any Irish city, the Cliffs of Moher will pop up over and over. They go from Dublin. They go from Galway. Why? Because there isn’t much else to see.

The cliffs are several hundred feet high, and they rise vertically out of the sea. From the top, you can see Galway and the Aran Islands. You have to walk to see the cliffs unless you have some kind of motorized chair. A lot of Irish sites are like this. They’re not interested in entertaining the disabled. If you can’t walk properly, go do something else.

There are some smaller cliffs to the right of the Cliffs of Moher as you face the sea. I told Rhodah they must be the Cliffs of Less.

There is nothing at all around the Cliffs. They are not near any big towns. You go see them, and you drive home.

The walk was somewhat arduous, especially for Rhodah, who is not about fitness. Whenever we walked on hilly ground, I had to stop repeatedly to let her get her breath. I told her she needed to start walking regularly. At her age, she should be walking off and leaving me, especially when I’m carrying a backpack and she isn’t.

While there is nothing interesting around the cliffs, there are quiet, beautiful towns along the way. We took note, figuring we would stay there if we visited Ireland again.

The roads were horrendous. Some turns were so sharp that on the way out of them, I actually saw my own rear bumper. Irish roads are also very narrow, because Irish landowners were too stingy to give up enough land to build proper roads. In some places, two-lane roads are actually narrower than two cars.

To make the roads worse, the Irish have no idea what a shoulder is. A typical road has a ditch a couple of feet from it, with a hedge or a wall rising straight up from the ditch. You can’t see around curves because of the hedges and walls, and you can’t pull over. If another tourist runs you off the road, into the ditch and whatever else you go.

When you rent a car in Ireland, don’t be a fool. Pay for no-deductible insurance. I did. I ended up off the road three times, and I was able to laugh about it.

The first time, Google took us up a one-lane road, and a big truck approached from the opposite direction. I had to back up a couple of hundred yards in a manual transmission car, shifting with the wrong hand, keeping my feet on the clutch and the brake, while unable to see behind me. I went into the ditch twice.

I thought the car was damaged, but I turned to Rhodah and said, “Who cares?” Not my problem.

The second time, a tourist came from the opposite direction on a very narrow road, and she (I assume it was a she) neither stopped nor moved out of the way. I drove right into the ditch while she crept past, halfway into my tiny lane.

Automatic. No deductible. Diesel. Remember what I tell you.

After Salthill, we went to Dingle, because everyone said we had to. Dingle is a tiny town on the Dingle peninsula on the west coast of Ireland. It has a fishing fleet, but basically, it’s a tourist town.

Well, let’s be serious. Every town in Ireland is a tourist town.

We stayed at Greenmount House, a B&B which, in Internet pictures, looked like a big resort. In reality, it was on a small lot on a hill outside Dingle. For the most part, it was very nice, but they had some kind of weak geothermal heat, and it didn’t work too well. They supplied an oil heater to help.

The innkeepers were very nice, and they put on a big breakfast spread. It almost made me forget that the Irish can’t do breakfast as well as we can.

I guess people will get mad because I criticized Irish breakfasts, because they are legendary. Legends have a way of turning out to be disappointing. The “full Irish breakfast” is Irish bacon, one egg, canned beans, white pudding, black pudding, one or two fried mushrooms, a link sausage, and toast. The bacon is totally inferior to actual bacon. A one-egg breakfast is like a 15-second massage. Beans cause constipation, so they do the opposite of what breakfast food is supposed to do. White pudding is really some kind of bulk sausage, and it’s not too bad. Black pudding is made from blood, so it’s actually a seasoned scab, literally. Irish link sausage is somewhere between a hot dog and a Vienna sausage, and that’s not a good place to be.

I asked for two white puddings instead of a scab. It’s remarkable that Christians don’t know we are not supposed to eat blood. Look it up. It’s not like Paul hid it from us.

One place accidentally left a scab on Rhodah’s plate, and she was so disturbed, she couldn’t eat for a while.

It was during our visit to Dingle that I got the idea of bringing my own cream to breakfast. I let the innkeeper know Americans like cream in their coffee, but I doubt he took the hint.

The best breakfast we had in Ireland came from McDonald’s, far and away. We ate breakfast together about 12 times, so I think we gave Ireland a good test, and McDonald’s is superior, without question. I recommend avoiding Irish breakfasts entirely. If someone put a Denny’s there, it would have to take reservations a month in advance.

Don’t call me provincial. I’ve had wonderful breakfast food in other countries, like Austria and France. Irish breakfast food doesn’t turn me off because it’s foreign. It turns me off because it isn’t very good. And McDonald’s makes a really excellent breakfast, as long as you avoid the pancakes and bagels. McMuffins and breakfast biscuits are very good, and so are the hash browns. If you don’t think so, you’re a snob. The food is not the problem.

While we were there, we kept trying to figure out why we were in Dingle. Finally, the innkeeper told me we were supposed to drive around and see cliffs and beaches. We made a tour of the Slea Head drive, and along the way, Rhodah got to visit her first beach. Prior to the trip, she had never seen the ocean at all, so walking on a beach was a big thrill for her.

Granted, it was cold, and there was no one swimming except for a couple of lunatics trying to make a point, but it was very pretty.

The food in Dingle was generally bad.

We were told we should visit a seafood place called Out of the Blue, by the harbor. It had a “Michelin mention.” I am pretty sure Michelin will mention anything, including the International House of Pancakes, but the people at Out of the Blue seemed proud to have been included. A Michelin STAR is a big deal. I don’t know if a mention means anything.

Truthfully, I don’t trust the Michelin people. No one even knows who they are, so how can anyone judge their discernment? They may be complete idiots.

Rhodah had never had lobster, so we got her one. She didn’t think too much of it. We paid around $60 to find out she didn’t like it. I had a piece of fish fried inside a sort of giant potato latke.

I’m sure the lobster tasted fine, but it was small and hard to get into, and she said it wasn’t worth the work.

The rest of the food was disappointing. The potato shroud was oily and limp, and the fish itself was also oily, not to mention wet and overcooked. The dish wasn’t seasoned much at all.

The bread consisted of a few tiny, cold slices of white bread and strange brown bread, accompanied by cold butter. No good restaurant serves cold butter. It’s like serving warm Champagne. You just don’t do it. Cold butter proves you have no idea what you’re doing. If you serve cold butter, you can’t possibly be trusted to serve anything else worth eating. As for bread, if it can’t be good, there should at least be plenty of it.

I think the B&B people sent us to this restaurant because they were used to snotty tourists who preferred impressive food to food that tastes good. We spent a lot of money and left hungry.

We did find decent ice cream. A volunteer lifeguard runs a little place called Kool Scoops, and it was very good. There was also a nationwide chain called Murphy’s, and not even the locals would recommend it. One of our innkeepers would only say, “Murphy’s is Murphy’s.” Murphy’s has touristy flavors, like Aran Island sweater swirl and sea salt with potatoes. I may be slightly wrong, but you get the idea. Kool Scoops was a real ice cream place, with real flavors like strawberry and chocolate.

We also went to James Long’s pub, where we had a bowling-alley-quality pizza and two cheeseburgers that smelled like sheep. They claimed they would give me a burger cooked medium, but it arrived well done. I actually wondered if it had sheep in it. Maybe they overcooked it to kill the sheep taste. The texture was dry and sort of like wet sawdust.

I didn’t see a single decent burger in Ireland. Avoid. Even if they cook them properly, the ovine smell and odd texture of the beef will ruin them.

We drove to Killarney because people say you should. I didn’t get Killarney. It was a little town pretty much like any town in, say, South Carolina. It had a Tesco (supermarket), some Aran Island wool places, and a bunch of pubs.

We went to the Laurels Pub for lunch. The Murphy’s was perfect, and they did a good job with fish and chips, but their wings (ordered by Rhodah) had a very odd smell to them. She couldn’t finish them.

Pubs are not like American bars. In America, bars are for fornication and drunkenness, period. A pub is basically a restaurant that also has a big bar. The Irish take small children to pubs.

We visited Tesco. You can buy anything there. They even sell clothes. Rhodah insisted on picking some up.

Rhodah took a notion to visit the Aran Islands. I didn’t think this was wise, but I went along with it. In order to make it work, we had to spend the night there. Most people pick an island, take a ferry early in the day, and go back to the mainland before dark.

The only place where we could find a room was Ard Einne, a guest house on Inis Mor, the biggest island. “Ard” means “high,” and “Einne” is a woman’s name.

Ard Einne has a two-night minimum, which is ridiculous, because there is no conceivable reason to spend more than one night on Inis Mor. Rhodah really wanted to see the islands, so we decided to pay for two nights even though we would only stay for one.

We booked a ferry from the town of Doolin. Several companies operate boats there. They go to the Arans and the Cliffs of Moher. It takes around an hour to get from Doolin to Inis Mor. Along the way, you stop at Inis Oirr, a smaller island people may well be visiting by mistake. A bunch of people got off our boat at Inis Oirr (also spelled Inisheer), and we heard someone wonder aloud whether they knew what they were doing. The island is really tiny, so you really need a good reason do debark there.

The ferries have indoor and outdoor seats. Unfortunately, we did not know about the indoor seats until we were seated on the top deck. Luckily for us, I had brought Rhodah a Carhartt jacket and Keen hiking shoes, along with wool socks. I was outfitted similarly. While the other passengers froze in hoodies, we were almost comfortable in the frigid wind.

On Inis Mor, we were accosted by an old taxi driver named Joe. He had a little bus, and he said he would drop us at Ard Einne. Joe was not a big talker, so he didn’t make it clear we would be joined by several Irish people he was picking up.

They were taking the 15-Euro tour of the island, so we decided to join in. Joe showed us the sights.

We stopped at a seal colony. The seals were about 200 yards away, sitting on rocks about the size of seals. When a rock moved, you knew you were looking at a seal. Not the greatest photo opportunity.

We also stopped at the Seven Churches, a bunch of ruins that included small graveyards. No one except me wanted to get out of the bus, so Joe drove on. He seemed displeased.

After that, he dropped us at the entrance to the island’s main attraction: a Bronze Age fort on a high cliff by the sea. “Coincidentally,” he happened to let us off at a place where there were three sweater stores, an ice cream shop (closed), and a busy cafe. We didn’t buy anything. The prices for woolens were the same as they were in Dublin, and I assumed the food at a place where they dropped tourists had to be bad.

Joe didn’t tell us about the fort, or maybe he did. I couldn’t understand much he said. After a few minutes of looking at sweaters we didn’t want, we went outside and saw that he and our new friends were gone, along with our luggage. Another driver told us we were supposed to walk to the fort and back. Joe would return for us. The people we had arrived with were already walking.

The fort was basically two rings of crude stone, and I would say it was half a mile from the stores. All uphill. Rhodah got winded again, but we eventually made it.

When Joe finally took us to Ard Einne, it looked like a scale model of the place I had seen on the Internet. I was ready for that. I was not ready for the room, which was so small, we had to maneuver to walk around the tiny double bed. The room was also cold, because the proprietor had opened the windows to air it out. She said the heat would come on later, so all would be fine. She said the comforter was quilted, as though that solved our problems. We got her to give us a blanket anyway.

Next time I visit a cold destination, I am going to put a space heater in my luggage. The next parsimonious B&B proprietor will find out about it when he or she gets her electric bill after we leave.

The door to the room was immediately to the left of the front door. There was no foyer. Very strange. Ordinarily, you would find a closet in a location like that.

The door was thin, and the B&B’s common room was across the hall, so we could hear everything everyone said.

The bathroom was so small, I couldn’t close the door without crumpling the bathmat. There was a sign on the room door admonishing us to take quick showers, presumably to save the owner money. That went over poorly with me, and of course, I paid no attention to it. If anything, I felt motivated to take unnecessarily long showers in order to get more for my Euro.

I’ll say this for Ard Einne: we only saw one beetle in the bathroom. And he was small.

The place was nearly empty, so I’m not sure why she put us next to the front door. Rhodah wondered if racism was involved, but the innkeeper was very nice, apart from putting cash before our comfort, so I doubt that was the case.

At night, we were very cold. The weather was below freezing, and the radiators, which came on late in the day, were tiny and not very warm. Heating oil isn’t free.

Breakfast at Greenmount House consisted of a generous buffet, as well as a number of dishes cooked to order. At Ard Einne, there was no buffet. Each of us ordered something from the menu, and that was it. There was no one else in the room. We only saw two other people while we were there, so we didn’t understand why we ended up in such a bad room.

The strange thing is that Ard Einne got all sorts of great reviews. I don’t know if they were fake or not, but we barely slept, and we were thrilled to leave.

During our only evening on the island, we ate at Joe Watty’s Bar. It was a big surprise. Everything was excellent, from the Murphy’s to the chocolate brownie.

Watty’s is a typical pub. Unlike the B&B, it was warm, proving there was no impediment to heating buildings on Inis Mor. Rhodah had fish and chips, which were very nice by Irish standards, and I had lamb stew. The only way the stew could have been better was if it had been made with beef. I got a generous serving, and I enjoyed all of it. The desserts were top notch. The service was good. It’s too bad there were no Joe Watty’s branches in Dublin.

I don’t know who Joe Watty is, but Marco Pierre White isn’t fit to mop his floors.

We spent our last two days in Dublin. There isn’t a lot to say about that. We stayed in the Trinity City Hotel, which I recommend. Don’t splurge for the hotel’s big Georgian suites. They’re old and weird. Just get a nice room with a king size bed. Everything in the hotel’s more modern rooms works fine, and the beds are great. They even have modern air conditioning and heat, unlike the suites.

I doubt I’ll ever return to Ireland unless a strange sequence of events drives me to move there. I just can’t see paying to visit again. I would love to have a house there in a rural area on maybe 30 acres of land, where I could hide out and wait for the rapture, but I don’t want to go back for 10 days so I can kiss the Blarney Stone or see how Guinness is made.

While we’re on the subject of Gaels, I have no desire to visit Scotland, either, even though I have a lot of Scottish blood. There is something dreary and depressing about the Scots, and if the Internet and eyewitness accounts are any indication, they don’t do much other than get drunk, curse, and fight. Scottish food is terrifying, and as for history, even less has happened in Scotland than Ireland. They don’t even make good beer. I tried a McEwan’s Scotch Ale once, and it wasn’t an experience I would want to repeat. As I recall, it was like drinking a rancid fruitcake.

The Irish are very musical, but somehow, the gift of music appears to have completely missed their cousins the Scots. I can’t figure that out. Go to Youtube and search for Scottish music, and two things come up: bagpipe dirges and the Proclaimers. If you don’t remember the Proclaimers, do yourself a huge favor and don’t go look them up. There are some sounds you don’t want in your brain.

We are getting to work on Israel now, so we ought to be there in the worst possible season: summer. Which month will it be when the biting flies hatch? I can’t remember. I wonder if the food is like it used to be. Back in my day, the Jews couldn’t cook anything except cookies and sandwiches, so in order to survive, I had to find Arab restaurants.

Whatever happens, it should be a great trip. There is more to life than nice weather and good food.

Side note: don’t make the mistake of traveling to Ireland with Delta Airlines. They gave me a cheap rate up front, and then they charged me about $140 for my luggage. Also, it is literally impossible to get in touch with them unless you have an afternoon to kill. I called them for information, and they told me I would be on hold for 90 minutes. I can call obscure airlines from backward countries that just got telephones and have a real person on the line in a minute or less, so Delta has no excuse.

I guess I should also remind people to buy travel insurance. The best company I’ve found is Heymondo. EDIT: not true. Heymondo refused to pay every claim we made. Your American health insurance is no good in other countries, and airlines are extremely unreasonable about trip changes and lost luggage. Rhodah’s large suitcase got lost somewhere in Ireland, France, South Africa, or Zambia, and Aer Lingus, Air France, and KLM have been utterly worthless. Only South African Airlink has made any effort to help. I called Heymondo, and they got on the case, pun not intended. They will confirm the loss, meaning they will call the airlines and get respect we could not get, and that could result in a genuine effort to locate it. If they can’t get the bag, they will give Rhodah $1700, and that’s better than the pittance the carriers offer. Her insurance ran around $60, and it was a great investment.

Flying is a horrible experience now. They used to let you make reservations by phone, with no ID and no payment in advance. Then after you paid, if you canceled your trip, they gave you a full refund. They didn’t search anyone; I used to take a knife with me on flights. Islam put an end to that. I didn’t have to take my shoes off. I didn’t have to have my picture taken over and over. No one took naked pictures of anyone. The stewardesses were pretty young women. Now, they treat you like a bothersome object that might explode at any time. Then there is the moronic mask rule.

My dad used to fly all over the country for his law practice, and when he got older, he said he was glad he didn’t have to do it any more because it had become so unpleasant. He used to zip around in business or first class, and the airlines treated him like a human being, but when he made his last flight in 2007, they saw him as just another annoyance with a wallet.

During my return trip, I realized I had lost all enthusiasm for air travel. Rhodah wants to see the world, but I have had it. I suppose we will continue traveling until she gets her green card, and I know Israel will be worth the pain, but after that, I want to quit for good.

Look what we got during our Ireland trip. Multiple check-ins. Long lines. Repeated searches. Masks. Tests. Tourist food. Tourist sweaters so shabby they weren’t worth buying. Thin tourist T-shirts that rivaled Pakistani-made rock concert T’s. Lost luggage. Uncaring airlines. Airports full of bad, dirty, overpriced food. Trashy airline passengers that made our trips unpleasant. Cramped seats. The Irish were great, but that only counts for so much.

I don’t know what Israel is like in the summer now, but when I was there many years ago, summer was peak tourist season, and things should be even worse with travel opening up after a long prohibition. Ireland was slow because of the season, so we had that going for us.

I am content to wait out the rest of my life in America unless Jeff Bezos buys me a jet.