Ireland

In 1996 I, my wife and a group of friends, nine of us in all, went to green Ireland.

Having landed in Dublin on a flight from Milan, we immediately took possession of a 9-seat van rented for the occasion and, having got used to driving on the left, we set off straight away in search of accommodation. Travelling in a group, especially such a large one, is not always pleasant (especially for me, who loves travelling alone), and when you are looking for somewhere to sleep you obviously have to split up across different places, of course in bed & breakfasts or hostels.

Luckily the Irish are so helpful it borders on the impossible, and you may well meet people who go out of their way to find you decent accommodation among friends and acquaintances, phoning and personally accompanying you.

Dublin is a beautiful capital: O'Connell Street is very beautiful, all the way across O'Connell Bridge towards the south and on to Trinity College; from there Grafton Street, where you come across various musicians; on Dame Street you can enter Dublin Castle. And in the evening there's fun to be had in the Temple Bar pubs, drinking Guinness to your heart's content and quality whiskey (Tyrconnell and Tullamore Dew among my favourites). The tour of the Guinness factory is interesting too.

We leave Dublin and head south on the N81. At Glendalough there is a beautiful monastic complex from the 6th century AD to see, with a characteristic Irish cemetery. We head to Kilkenny, famous for its medieval castle and its wonderful beer. We continue south towards Cashel to visit the famous Rock, which according to legend is an enormous stone that fell from the devil's mouth at the sight of Saint Patrick. We visit Cormac's Chapel and Saint Patrick's Cross.

Continuing south we reach Cahir, where you can see the famous castle on the rocky islet on the river Suir, famous for its many film shoots such as Braveheart, Barry Lyndon, Excalibur,...). In the evening we arrive in Cork, a port city in the south of Ireland, not particularly beautiful except for its evening life in the pubs. We especially remember one for being frequented exclusively by really nice and chatty over-70s who never missed a chance to grope the girls in our group.

We continue west to Kenmare, right on the Ocean and the gateway to the Ring of Kerry, which we do not visit, heading instead towards the Dingle peninsula.

We pass through Killarney and Killorglin to take the R561, which brings us into the Dingle. Here the landscape is wonderful and wild. The people still speak Gaelic among themselves, and even the signs are written in this ancient and incomprehensible language. Sheep everywhere, there are an absurd number of them and you have to struggle not to run them over on these little roads.

On the R559 you can see the beautiful Slea Head cliffs and, if the day allows, you can see the Basket Islands. Towards Smerwick we pass the fort of Dun an Oir. The whole area around the R559 is beautiful and should be seen at a leisurely pace.

We leave the Dingle, passing through Tralee towards Limerick. Bunratty Castle is very beautiful but we don't visit it inside, nor the Bunratty Folk, an ancient reconstructed village, since it is all very touristy, amusement-park style. Limerick doesn't offer much apart from the view of the river Shannon, so we continue towards the western part of the island in the direction of the Cliffs of Moher, the most famous cliffs in Ireland. Spectacular and windy, there's no denying it. The advice is to move away from the crowd of tourists and clamber up to quieter places, even if forbidden, in order to savour the visual impact.

At Doolin part of the group boarded for the Aran Islands. Another part preferred instead to visit this part of the island, truly splendid. In Doolin there is a lovely pub, Gus O'Connor's, where you can drink excellent beer (Guinness or the splendid Murphy too) and listen to good live music. The whole area of the Burren is fantastic and should be explored far and wide.

We pass through Galway, very quickly, to enter the Connemara area. The R341 towards Clifden is marvellous: tiny roads, sheep, rock, meadows and lakes are the only images before our eyes. Not a house, not a person for kilometres. The rare times we happen to find a house it is an occasion to stop and exchange a few words with the friendly inhabitants, who immediately offer you everything to eat.

In this area we visited Kylemore Abbey, an abbey, now a convent of nuns, set in a fantastic spot facing a little lake; the Connemara National Park, where you can take beautiful walks.

We leave this area truly reluctantly to head back towards Dublin, cutting across on the N4. A thought surely goes to all the families who hosted us in fantastic style, with breakfasts that will be hard to match, as well as surely to the magic this land full of music and splendid landscapes offers.