There’s much to see in Ireland and my sister, Katie, put together an itinerary that would make a veteran tour guide put down the microphone and weep into a big stash of museum pamphlets and bus schedules. We left no stone or sheep unturned and no castle ruin or fairy fort unphotographed. In hindsight, I see now that the majority of our days were spent exactly as I would have wanted to spend them: eatin’ and drinkin’ with a good dose of walkin’ to break up our talkin’ and merrymakin’ …
The Eatin’
I believe Irish food can be summed up in one word … CHOLESTEROL.
For Breakfast: bacon, sausage, and eggs, garnished with mushrooms and a half slice of tomato, and coffee/tea every morning. Accompanying the above on the breakfast plate were two dark sausage patty-looking food items called blood pudding. Despite my penchant for eating most of my meat medium rare, I tend to like my pudding to be sweetened with sugar and fat and to be blood-free.
Blood-encased items notwithstanding, Irish food is actually quite tasty. Tourists and locals alike eat the vast majority of meals in pubs. For lunch, we usually ate Irish stew—where it’s not uncommon to see two or three whole potatoes in the mix, no potato famine these days—or Shepherd’s pie. (I never saw a menu that sold corned beef and cabbage, which I was fine with.) For dinner, we usually ate fish and chips, and—other than breakfast—a Guinness or local brew or two to wash down each meal.
The Drinkin’
There is a preponderance of old people in pubs in Ireland, much more than I’ve ever seen in pubs in the U.S. I wondered if the legal drinking age was twenty-one … multiplied by three. It’s not unusual to see an old, craggy man seated in a pub window, lurched over a half-finished pint at 10 a.m. They’re known as “Old Man” pubs. These are supposedly the best places to get Guinness, the idea being that the old men have the best discernment and won’t drink it if it’s not up to snuff. One American student we met who is currently studying in Ireland said her host parents, who were in their 60s, get home at 2 a.m. several nights a week.
It’s not unusual to see a small band playing various stringed instruments in the corners of many pubs, wailing out some old Irish tune, the whole bar familiar with every word and inflection. These people have songs for every occasion and they sing them with vigor. If the Irish rugby team scores a try, there’s a song for that. If the team misses a try, there’s a song for that too. If Irish team loses, there’s a great song for that. If the Irish team wins, there’s an even better song for that. If the Irish team huddles ... you get the idea.
The Sportin’
During sporting events across Ireland, the pubs are full of old and young alike. Not surprisingly, football (soccer) and rugby are huge, as is the national sport of hurling. No, this does not involve skillful projectile vomiting, but rather it resembles a lacrosse game, played with hard sticks (hurleys) and a small hard ball (a sliotar). It’s a fast and fierce ancient game requiring great skill and dexterity, and a little dash of lunacy too. The players are as revered as professional baseball or basketball players and while the endorsement deals are few, the perks (general adoration, female followers, free alcohol) compensate.
Surprisingly, horseracing is also big in Ireland. The TVs in the pubs blare with pre-race prognosticators going over the stats of every horse and the odds it has of winning the race. Most everyone bets on the horses and nearly every small town we drove through had a “bookie” (betting) shop on Main Street. Ireland’s affinity for horseracing confounded me a bit as none of us on the trip ever remembers seeing a horse. Now sheep racing would make sense. One fifties-ish pub dweller explained that these races were important because they were against the English. They wanted the Irish horses to beat the English so badly that they’d only bet on their own, even if that meant losing the bet. After all, who’d dare cheer for an English horse in an Irish pub? Their passion for horseracing saddled up closely to their dislike of the English.
