Ramble
Quest - Why Grandma Hated Ireland.
My dear, departed grandmother took a few trips through Europe, always returning with stories about how nice the people where, how great the food was, and how wonderful the sights were. Except for the time she went to Ireland that is, which is ironic because she was part Irish and previously proud of the fact. The vehemence of Grandma's scorn for Ireland, post trip, became legendary around our household. "The whole place smells like shit." "Nothing to see, everything over-priced, terrible service, awful food, the worst hotels, and everyone out for your money." And my personal favorite: "They said we were going to see a castle and it was just a pile of rocks!"
Clearly Grandma didn't have a good time in Ireland and the "Irish" in her was up against the place forever. She felt particularly betrayed because she went to England on the same trip, and loved the place, and her Irish grandmother had raised her with stories of how terrible the English were. My sisters and I would enjoy baiting her on to the Irish topic, stirring up the inevitable diatribe. Now, I did have a good time in Ireland, as I will eventually relate. However, I do have a better appreciation of why Grandma didn't.
Her first complaint seems laughable at first, after all if you're in the country you're going to smell some manure. However, Ireland is quite obviously seriously over-grazed, and particularly in some of the most scenic areas. It's a bit tragic, but I think they are finally catching on to the erosion problems this has caused and starting to cut back a bit. I can attest that I stepped in a whole lot of shit while hiking about the countryside.
There's far too much truth to her second complaint, most particularly if you're sticking to the tourist route. Few places have over-hyped so little and charged so much as in Ireland. Normally, I will pay just about any admission charge, after all, I figure I came all the way over there so I should see as much as I can. This is not a good idea in Ireland. There's just too many places that will charge you much too much to basically see nothing. They are particularly shameless about ripping off tourists. Even when an attraction is interesting, it can sometimes be off-the-charts over-priced. The Guinness tour is a good example. You don't tour the brewery, but rather walk through a series of elaborate commercials for Guinness. It's rather fun as the commercials are often creatively avant garde, and you get a pint with a nice view at the end. But they charge about $16 for the privilege of walking through their beer commercials! It's just so out of step with every other beer tour on the planet.
Grandma took packaged tours, which is something I don't do since I'm not a grandma. I did go on one packaged day trip on my last full day in Ireland, as I wanted to get a quick look at the Connemara region. I went with a company called O'Neachtain Tours, a big mistake. In fact, it was probably the lamest tour I've ever taken. We'd literally stop to look at a herd of sheep, a pile of peat bricks, or even, yes Grandma was right on here, a pile of rocks. All the while the driver shamelessly babbled on with the most tediously innane nonsense, so that it was actually a relief when he would shut up and just play tapes of Irish music. And then, to add insult to injury, Kylemore Abbey, the highlight attraction of the tour, was closed on this day but O'Neachtain neglected to find that out ahead of time. When I complained about this they claimed: "act of god"..
Even when you aren't getting ripped off in Ireland you can sometimes feel that places are over-hyped. A perfect example of this is the Brown's Hill Dolman near Carlow. Now, there's nothing wrong with this dolman, it's just that they make such a big deal out of a "pile of rocks". I think of the dolmans I saw in the Netherlands and, as I will later relate, in Spain, and in both places the dolmans were better and eminently less over-publicized. A tourist just gets tired of the crap, or rather "blarney", thrown their way in Ireland.
OK, now I've gotten my Irish bashing out of my system. Oops, not quite. I have to add that Aer Lingus, their national airlines, is one of the worst around, for many reasons that I shall not boringly relate. There, now I feel better and can relate the story of all the good times I had in Ireland. Not quite yet though, because first I wound up going to Scotland.