Ireland vs. Disney World

We learned five things while visiting Ireland this summer:
1) In August, you can get a sunburn after 4pm (see picture below of people getting sunburned on a beach in Cork [you'll have to trust me on this one]) so don't laugh at your friends when they suggest you put on sun block late into the afternoon.

2) Professional photographers don't really earn their pay in Ireland since it's not that hard to find a lovely cow in a lush green pasture with a humble white cottage in the distance...

.....or a misty sailboat-filled harbor....



....or a lonely boat inside that harbor.

  

3) There's no reason for signs like the below, because everyone knows that death is always just a few feet away....





....which the kids proved in Baltimore, County Cork....

.....but my husband didn't (see risky picture he took below):



4) Ireland was a net exporter of food during the Famine (rich land owners apparently didn't feel a desire to share their crop with the starving people outside their gates).  So, living in the halls of Kilmainham Prison (below) was a viable alternative for the famished....until prison administrators decided that the problem was the hungry and the solution was a reduction in rations.  So, it is no wonder that the first half of the 19th Century saw over two million Irish leave their country--1.2 million of which landed in the US. 



5) EU austerity measures have both strangled the Irish economy and created a general nation-wide malaise.

So, given the large number of Americans of Irish ancestry and the historical and current examples of Europe not actually helping Ireland, I believe now might be the time for the United States to woo Ireland away from the EU.  Designating them as the 51st state would be nice, but that's probably too possessive. "Commonwealth" seems cold and isn't much better.  Establishing a "North Atlantic Union" might be nice--although the acronym would be "NAU", making the vote on its adoption confusing.  However, if we do vote "NAU" instead of "NAY", we should probably invite the Canadians to come aboard so they can stop paying an extra dollar for the same book, and we can stop jamming US vending machines with their coins.  I'd also say Mexico deserves an invitation except they provide us with too many drugs and we provide them with too many weapons to be a healthy union.....it's more like a Hollywood marriage, in fact...kind of like Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. 

You might be wondering how NAU can help the Irish and this is what I have so far:

1. Free Vanity Plates
2. Cheap name brand clothing
3. Great St. Patty's Day parades (no offense, but theirs aren't so great).
4. A strip of land in Florida to thaw out during the winter.
5. They don't have to run back to Ireland when their visa runs out.

What's in it for us:

1. Everyone can wear "Kiss Me I'm Irish" shirts on St. Patrick's Day without lying.
2. Access to a highly educated, highly mobile populace.
3. Someone always has your back in a bar fight.
4. Zero percent tax if you win the lottery, or buy a book (we're more likely to do one than the other).
5. You can honestly call W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bono your countrymen.
6. We don't have to run back to the US when our visas run out.

If you're thinking that I have Irish blood and this is the reason behind my enthusiasm, you may be right, I don't know.  The only way to know for sure is to take that blood test I've been avoiding.   See, my great grandmother's first husband was a Native American and her second was an Irishman. Two of her children looked Native, and one looked Irish (my grandfather) and although everyone claimed my grandpa was the youngest child and the product of the second marriage, I learned in high school that he was actually a middle child.  So, clearly something scandalous was going on in Duck County, Tennessee in 1914 or maybe it was 1915. Truth was, Grandpa didn't know what year he was born which either points to his lying to join the Army or to a grandmother who was a tart.

Back to Ireland:  My husband says his next wife will be Italian, and if we're allowed to make requests, I'd like to put in for a husband from Killarney.  We didn't visit Killarney this time, but we visit Ireland pretty often and Killarney accents haven't left my head since 2001.  Now, I know throwing out previous trips to Ireland sounds pretty snobby, but visiting Ireland is really no more expensive than taking your family to Disney World--no matter what the commercials say--because at the end of the day, the only thing magical about the Magic Kingdom is that someone coerced you to spend far too much money to wait in far too many long lines for rides that are far too short to justify either the airfare, hotel, $75 tickets, $15 parking fee, or the fighting when no one can agree in which long line to stand.

Also, let's be honest and admit that half the reason anyone goes anywhere is for bragging rights (people who blog about their travels are especially tiresome) and there are 87% more bragging rights for an American who visits Ireland than an American who visits Disney World.  It's a scientific fact.  So, the next time that perfectly-put-together mom of the school's most annoying kid sings, "Well, hello there!  How nice you let your son dress so casually.  My son hates that I make him wear his nice clothes to school events," you can say, "Yeah, I haven't been able to wrestle those jeans from him since we returned from Ireland."  Then, for the first time, you can look at her with feigned sympathy as you push past with an, "Excuse me."  This has actually never happened to me, but I imagine it could if I took an interest in my children's education. 

In any event, here's the off-the-top-of-my-head breakdown of what you can expect to spend for a week in Ireland:
You can frequently buy a ticket from the East Coast to Dublin for $650, and you can stay in a B&B for between 35 and 120 Euro a day, depending on the location. 

Camping Aside:
Although we camped a lot in Europe, camping in Ireland is a bad idea unless you want to see your tent fly like ours did in the Alps (http://www.wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/insomnia-and-flying-tents.html), and/or you don't mind feeling damp and cold before you go to sleep; dreaming about being damp and cold; then, waking up to a cloud of visible breath and no desire to shower or brush your teeth because you're too damp and cold.

It costs $120/week to rent a car (brush up on your manual transmission skills or you'll pay about double for an automatic) and $175/week to rent a minivan.

The only thing that really costs money in Ireland is eating/drinking out, but when you compare it to the cost of the bottled water and hamburger you bought the last time you were at Universal Studios, Ireland is cheaper.  Now, my Dublin friends say nothing is free in Ireland, but you're not going to spend $75/ticket for anything you see (even the Guiness factory costs about $60 for a family ticket), and the best parts of the country are the walks along cliffs and the seaside which are absolutely free....as long as you don't slip.  If you're worried your kids will be bored, I promise they won't.  After all, who needs a roller coaster when you can back down a narrow cliffside road looking into the grill of a tour bus while your kids yell, "watch out for the sheep!"....Well, that was a previous trip when we saw the Ring of Kerry and I was the one yelling about the sheep because we didn't have kids yet. I did, however, have a husband hanging outside the passenger-side window taking pictures of the sheep with child-like enthusiasm while we left the dangerous driving to our Irish friends.

So, in summary, Ireland beats Disney World hands down and I say this with full expectation of either being sued or killed by DW thugs.  Additionally, Ireland holds just as many "wows" as any other country we visited this summer and adds a dash of  "holy cow!" (see pictures below of Mizen Head Signal Station in County Cork).  In fact, the boy declared Ireland to be his favorite part of the summer, and just for the record, after two trips to Orlando, he has never said anything positive about Disney World.  Ever.



View from Mizen Head Signal Station, County Cork

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill