Ireland

[Duncan Gardner]

Ireland

Irish Army to fight aggressive Rhododendrons- Trump promises support to Mugabe

[Sean of the Shed]

Ireland

I had a week in Clare a few years back, and there is a surprising amount to see and do in what is a pretty sparse county. Lahinch on the coast has surfing of all types for the youts, and the Michael Cusack centre is worth a visit. Obviously there is also the scenery like the cliffs of Moher and The Burren, which a place of huge cultural significance.

[Guy Profumo]

Ireland

Dull but true, the first house I ever lived in was in Avoca Avenue.

[Lang Spoon]

Ireland

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: I drove (was driven) there from Dublin (through the likes of Longford and Roscommon; there is absolutely no need to stop off in those hellholes). Though I guess the cliffs of Moher are on the route from Kerry if you can hack it (if you find cliffs in themselves amazing, I never understood how they could charge a fee to stop off at the visitors centre car park when you can just drive a bit up the road to get the same bloody view). But yeah, go to Kerry. They have trees and everything on (some of) the hillsides as well.

You madman. The southern half of roscommon is the end of the great midland bog, but the nothern bit is like the lake district. The Area around Boyle (moone Boy) across towards drumshanbo and into leitrim is absolutely gorgeous and there's a huge center parcs opening in Lough key forest park. It's also basically the centre of boat tourism in Ireland.

But I don't know where I'd put it on a list of things to do if you only have a week. Similarly Achill is beautiful, and you are statistically speaking very likely to meet a close relative of Darren Fletcher or Kevin Kilbane, but again it is literally the most awkward place in Ireland to get to.

My Roscommon experience consisted of stopping off in a manky town for lunch on the way, and an interminable drive through blasted brown grass heath. There were nice looking hills in the distance but. I guess that was south Roscommon.

[Ek weet nie]

Ireland

Most of the country has been covered but I'll just add Newgrange in Meath as it is pretty special. Hard to combine with the west though. Only logical if you decided to go north to Belfast and the Giants Causeway.

If you do spend a day in Dublin, the National Gallery will finally be finished the refurbishment started in 2009 this June. To celebrate, they have a major Vermeer exhibition that is currently in the Louvre.

IMMA has a superb exhibition on Lucien Freud if that floats your boat.

Howth and Dalkey are lovely villages on the commuter line if you fancy a laid back lunch or dinner on the coast.

[Calvert]

Ireland

The Giant's Causeway is big hexagonal-shaped pile of shite. In the drizzle.

Donegal
Donegal
Donegal.

[Lang Spoon]

Ireland

Good to hear of a reason to visit inside IMMA instead of just the superb park and recreated 17/18th cent garden. The sort of place that makes me wish I had a dog. The general collection doesn't live up to the ersatz French Baroque building and its fantastic courtyard, though its biggest crime is being worthy and a bit boring. The "GoMA" in Glasgow is a piss poor waste -paintings picked by the wife of the last SLabour First Minister in her current cooncil Parks and Arts and Sport Czar role- of a stunning building (and has the city centre public library crammed like an embarrassing cat piss scented aunt into the basement next to the jacks and the cafe).

[Duncan Gardner]

Ireland

Adding to EWN, if in Dalkey try up the hill to the Druid's Chair pub on Killiney Hill

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Ireland

Ek weet nie wrote: Most of the country has been covered but I'll just add Newgrange in Meath as it is pretty special. Hard to combine with the west though. Only logical if you decided to go north to Belfast and the Giants Causeway.

If you do spend a day in Dublin, the National Gallery will finally be finished the refurbishment started in 2009 this June. To celebrate, they have a major Vermeer exhibition that is currently in the Louvre.

IMMA has a superb exhibition on Lucien Freud if that floats your boat.

Howth and Dalkey are lovely villages on the commuter line if you fancy a laid back lunch or dinner on the coast.

Well, Meath itself is a lovely county to visit, it's unfortunately not on the way to anywhere really, and it's not really somewhere you'd go just for itself. You could do newgrange from Dublin if you were going to spend more than one night there. It's a reasonable trip up the M3. But Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are nice. Slane and places like Rathmoylon are lovely, and all along the boyne. Even Drogheda looks amazing, just as long as you never hear any of the locals speak.

You could go to the Battle of the Boyne interpretative centre, if only to film the reaction of two kids from romania, when someone tried to explain to them that there was a battle here 326 years ago, and every July People dress up and celebrate this battle by being the Orange Order in July. "These Gauls are crazy" while furiously tapping their heads wouldn't even begin to cover it.

[ad hoc]

Ireland

They are from Romania but are culturally much more Hungarian. The idea of memorialising ancient battles is certainly not alien to them (mind you Hungarians tend to do it for epic defeats, so that'll be a difference)

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Ireland

Do Hungarians march around in front of their vanquishers to remind them of shit that happened five centuries back?

I bet they don't. And I bet they don't burn down their own houses doing it either.

[ad hoc]

Ireland

I laugh in the general direction of your once a year. Every single church bell in Hungary is rung at noon every single day of every single year as a memory of a battle that was fought in 1456 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Belgrade_(1456)#Noon_Bell

And as for defeats, you barely get through an interaction with a Hungarian without some reference to the battle of Mohacs (1526) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs

It has been superceded by Trianon now as the national trauma, which is merely a century ago, so you know there's progress

[Duncan Gardner]

Ireland

1456? What modern trivia is this?

Irish State TV rings a bell at 6pm every night to commemorate events from 28 AD. Bong!

[Calvert]

Ireland

Hahahaha!

Ah, The Angelus. A big painting of herself looking wistful followed by six bongs and the Six-One Nuacht
A remnant of a simpler time, if you will, when priests could touch you up and claim 'sure, I was only messing'.

You'd have imagined Berba's All-New Funky Motherfuckin' Ireland would've dispensed with that dogma by now.

[Lang Spoon]

Ireland

I never feel more of a proddy atheist than when I have the misfortune to turn on Rte at the holy joe hour. Would they cut it if something massive happened at 17:59, or would we still get the footage of tossers looking all thoughtful and spiritual before the six one starts?

[Calvert]

Ireland

Weird how that can happen in such a modern, progressive European country, isn't it?
Even the Prods have given up on GSTQ after the main event in cinemas up here years ago.

[ad hoc]

Ireland

Just thought I'd thank everyone who contributed to this thread again. It was all extremely helpful. We're flying into Dublin on the 19th driving over to Galway where we'll spend 3 days before heading south and staying 3 nights in Bantry - using both places as a base for explorations. Finally back up to Dublin for one night and the ferry to Holyhead.

(to my surprise finding accommodation in Dublin was the hardest part of that. Seemed like every hotel room in the city was booked out - on a Sunday night. I tried to find out why but the only thing I could discover was that there is a Tony Bennett concert that night. Is he playing in a massive stadium to a crowd of adoring provincials?)

Anyway if anyone fancies a pint on Sunday 25th in Dublin and doesn't mind if I have my kids with me, let me know.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Ireland

ooh, I'll be knocking around galway I'd say if you fancy a pint and a few yarns

As for the Angelus, it's no longer the angelus, it's a minute for reflection. We keep it because it keeps our parents/grannies happy, and they've 'lost' so much of the world of their youth. Those people will be dead soon enough, and it can slide at that point. It's on RTE in the way that Ronan Collins and John Creedon are there.

It is worth noting though, what they actually show. When I was a kid it was all Byzantine icons, and medieval icons that really gave me an appreciation for the technical artistic advances in perspective of the renaissance. But now It's pictures of old people, having a moment of reflection, and migrants out playing with their kids and having a moment of reflection, or a pole in church, and hammering home to old people that all of these strange new people who came to Ireland who look different, are just ordinary people living ordinary lives, but also they're the only other religious people in the country, so they have more in common with the old people than most of their children in that respect.

The important thing to remember is that the only religious people you see on the actual news are either Parish priests talking about some local tragedy, like a car crash that kills 18 in donegal, or Fr Peter McVerry or Sister Stanislaus Kennedy tearing the bollocks off the government over homelessness, or the prison system or how they deal with drug addicts. But Peter mcVerry and sister Stan are perhaps two of the finest people to be born in Ireland in the 20th century, so they get a pass. You'll see very few bishops. (You might see father Shay Cullen, who runs a charity for street children in the phillipines and lives under constant threat of assassination for his work trying to combat the child sex industry. But he's an infrequent correspondent)

[ad hoc]

Ireland

Definitely be up for that. When I'm not on my phone and can therefore navigate this board better I'll drop you a pm

[EIM]

Ireland

The authorities in Ireland are obsessed with people putting their feet on seats. Don't put your feet on seats.

[ad hoc]

Well we had an excellent time and pretty much hit every Irish cliche going. Started off driving across to Galway, had a day in the Burren (and at the cliffs), before meeting TAB in the evening in a pub in the town. Unsurprisingly TAB was excellent company and the only downside was the kids getting hungry and a bit tired so we had to leave relatively early. The following day we drove round Connemara on TAB's recommendation, saw some beautiful places including Ireland's fjord and even saw people genuinely cutting peat. Next day we drove down south stopping for lunch in Killarney. Killarney was a bit meh, to be honest, but then we went to the castle which was worth doing. (Hungarian word Rossz pron. Ross means "bad", so we had hours of endless fun laughing at the Ross castle, the Ross boat trips, the Ross pier and so on and so forth). We were staying in a place called Ballylickey which is about the more Irish place name I could have imagined if I'd been asked to make a fictional one up. Our first day in West Cork was raining (but you know, we were doing the cliches and the previously sunny weather, though beautiful, was not fully ticking the Irish experience boxes), but we managed to enjoy not driving very far (I particularly enjoyed this bit) and seeing things we might otherwise not have done, including the museum of the famine in Skibbereen (on our return I rewatched this and realised that this is where I'd heard the name Skibbereen before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72BrqGNvaT0 ). Our final full day there we spent driving round the Ring of Breara, which was fucking stunning (and the weather was gorgeous once again). Final day drove up to Dublin, and spent the afternoon wandering round, and even watched a few overs of a women's cricket match in Trinity College. Next morning got the boat over to Holyhead. All in all it was a superb trip and thanks to everyone who made suggestions and helped me come up with an itinerary.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

heh, Ballylickey is a real place. It means town of the slab of rock,and it was the home of Phillip Graves Who exposed the Protocols of the elders of Zion as a hoax. He was also the half brother of Robert Graves who wrote I Claudius, and "Goodbye to all that." And if you think your kids thought ross castle was funny, imagine being on a bus with a bunch of poles when you're driving through Rooskey in Co. Roscommon.

There is nothing on this earth that is more relaxing than lying on the grass outside the Pav in Trinity watching people playing cricket quite badly.

[Duncan Gardner]

Heh yer not far wrong there

Anywhere on a hillside in most Slavonic speaking countries has giggle potential- Horni or Hora.

At risk of annoying AH, my tip for food service in up country Hungary- just exclaim "Shite" in an exaggerated Ulster country accent, and a cheese omelette will appear

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I hope your kids liked Kerry AH. It sounds like ye had a lot of luck with the weather. And it was lovely to meet ye inside in town. your missus is really nice.

[NHH]

Apologies for resurrecting this thread, but seemed as good a place as any.

So, in short, we (me, Mrs NHH and our kids currently aged 14 and 10) are seriously thinking on moving to Ireland. The gnawing sense that England is, and will remain a racist economic basket case of a shithole teetering ever close to failed-state status and/or fascism. It's no place I want to live, and no place I want my kids to grow up in and try and make something with their lives. We'd long harboured a yen to move to Scotland once they'd vote for Indy, but that seems ever further away, frankly. We're both freelancers and for my own part, I do 90% of my work by Zoom in the UK, and there's some possibilities to expand what I do into Ireland if some legislative changes that are being proposed in the framework for Co-ops come off.

We'd want to live either Galway way, or probably Cork, but there's nothing fixed beyond not being too far from an airport as we've got elderly parents in England and lots of friends etc.

The issues are mainly:

1) To what extent is Ireland tied economically to the UK's fortunes, still?

2) How will the kids fare? How will they be received as two kids from southern England culturally, and how will they fare academically? We'd be likely to time a move when the eldest was 16, and the youngest 12

3) Politically, what happens if SF actually became the largest party in a government?

We'd plan to come over in Easter this year and spend a good 7-10 days driving around and getting a feel for things; in addition to the (excellent) stuff on this thread, waht should people seriously considering moving over be thinking of doing?