Ireland Travel Guide
"The modern American tourist," wrote historian Daniel J. Boorstin, "has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers." That said, Ireland continues to offer more than its share of both.
At first glance, Ireland presents a familiar face to American visitors. The language is the same, only more lyrical, the faces are familiar, the food recognizable, the stout legendary. Many visitors, notably Irish Americans, experience their arrival as a kind of homecoming. It takes a while for this superficial reverie to wear off. When it does, the other face of Ireland shows itself, and this is when the country becomes truly exciting.
Ireland is a place of profound contradiction and complexity. For one thing, it is at the same time both ancient and adolescent. It's as young as it is old.
Ireland's age is obvious to anyone with a car. Within a half-day's drive of downtown Dublin lie Neolithic tombs, Bronze Age forts, early Christian monastic sites, Viking walls, and Georgian estates -- enough antiquity to make your head spin, all in plain sight. Centuries-old castles are as commonplace in Ireland as Wal-Mart stores are in the United States. The Irish past doesn't exist just in books -- it's in the backyard. A shovel, digging for peat or potatoes, may well strike a 5,000-year-old grave. Thousands of unexcavated ancient sites litter the countryside. Any visitor to Ireland who ventures beyond its shops and pubs will soon be struck by how the country revels in its age.
What is less obvious is how new Ireland is as a nation. The Republic of Ireland, with its own constitution and currency, is barely 50 years old. Mary McAleese, the current president of Ireland, is only the eighth person to hold that office. In political age, Ireland, for all its antiquity, is a mere pup. Like any adolescent, it's doing many things for the first time, and at least a few of its contradictions make sense when you keep that fact in mind. Compounding Ireland's youth as a nation is the youth of its people. Roughly half of the population is under 25, and nearly a quarter is under 15. This means that, in some homes, those who once fought for Irish independence are living under the same roof with those who have never known anything else. In these same homes, the gap between generations is often seismic. It is indeed curious that in a country where what happened 1,000 years ago reads like yesterday's news, it is common to feel old and outnumbered at 30.
Ireland's past has been remarkably tumultuous, inspiring a tradition of courage, humor, and creativity. Change is nothing new to the island, yet the rate and scale of the changes occurring in Ireland today are without precedent. And that's where the contradictions become so endearing, like the old farmer in a tweed cap who is afraid of computers but rings his bookmaker on a cellphone. Like the publican progressive enough to have a website but traditional enough to not like seeing a woman drinking from a pint glass. (Older folks often tsk-tsk that "Ladies should drink from half-pint glasses.") Like the grocer-cum-post-office, or better still, the grocer-cum-hardware-store-cum-pub, both common entities in many a rural town. Like the national weather forecasts, which, even with the help of a gazillion satellites, still manage to appear so parochially informal. One Nostradamus-like radio weatherman actually offered this by way of a forecast: "It's dry and clear across most of the country, and let's hope it stays that way." The magic of today's Ireland lies in these daily slices of life. Take the time to let them wash over you.
