The Magic of Ireland on the Road

Flight Alghero - London Stansted - Dublin

Departure from Cagliari with my two great friends Carlo and Nicola, and arrival in Alghero in the morning, after a two-hour drive. From Alghero a Ryanair flight to London and then a second flight to Dublin. At Dublin airport, by now nighttime, we have a car waiting for us, rented already from Italy with Hertz. We go to pick it up and to our astonishment we find the keys to a gorgeous, enormous, incredibly spacious big car. At first we think it's a mistake, since we booked a decidedly lower-category car, but you know, with reservations you can never know exactly which car they'll give you, and so instead of a Ford Focus, that being the stated category, we end up with a car with an immense hood in which we manage to fit all our capacious suitcases!

Armed with courage and enthusiasm we begin our journey: Carlo is the first to try the thrill of driving on the opposite side, sitting on the right with the gear shift on the left! We leave the airport taking the motorway that leads to Dublin, being careful to drive in the right lane. So we decide to go into the capital, we can't not give it at least a look on a Saturday night!

From this point on we immediately understand that nothing will be the same as in Italy, and that we're in a place where the culture is completely different from ours. Hundreds of tipsy and drunk young people wander the streets, sometimes linking arms so they don't fall (when I say young people I mean guys and girls, since there the girls drink at least as much as the guys). Some girls even take off their high-heeled open shoes, dressed as if we were in summer, and walk barefoot while we're freezing with our jackets on... but is this the land of Cockaigne?

Soon we realise we're the only sober people walking around but the best part is that despite all those people who have drunk heavily we're not at all afraid of them, there's no dangerous situation (this day as throughout the rest of the trip), quite the opposite! The Irish, when they drink, are at their best and become merry, sociable, they have a great time, they're not aggressive or dangerous.

Our vain hope of finding accommodation for the night fades quickly anyway and, shaken by the initial shock, we go back to the car, leaving Dublin and heading toward Cashel. It's late at night by now and we stop to sleep in the car somewhere....

Cashel; Cork

In somewhat pitiful conditions after the night spent in the car, we set off early in the morning for our first destination: the town of Cashel, with the imposing ruins of its abbey. We stop along the road at some little shop where we ask for some hot tea, but they give us something mixed with milk that tastes like anything but tea! As soon as we arrive we park the car at the foot of the hill where the monument overlooking the whole town stands. The typically Irish houses appear marvellous in our eyes, maybe it's the excitement of our first day and also the fact that we've never seen them before. A short climb on foot leads to the abbey, very beautiful and evocative, certainly one of the largest and most intact complexes on the island.

We go inside while Nicola reads the history of these walls from the guidebook, and we do a loop around the hill from where you can admire the whole town of Cashel. The atmosphere created by the large Celtic crosses, the ruins and the crows continuously fluttering above our heads is distinctive.

After a couple of hours of visiting we set off for the city of Cork, in the South-West of the island. It's Ireland's second city and it's really lovely and liveable. We immediately notice that people are not at all frantic and the traffic isn't as stressful as in Dublin. Even though we stall the car at a traffic light a couple of times, not being used yet to driving on the opposite side and to the vehicle, nobody honks behind us!

We park the car and take a walk, getting something to eat and drink in a characteristic pub. Then we look for accommodation, consulting the map of hostels all over Ireland (it's found everywhere and it's nothing short of super handy). We find a great one, the Isaac's hostel ( which from the outside facade looks like a castle, right in the city centre. The rooms are clean, spacious, with carpet on the floor and comfortable bunk beds, while the bathroom is shared on the floor.

After putting away our suitcases, we rest and take a walk around the city, now at night, spotting the characteristic river that divides the city and the splendid cathedral. Then we venture out in search of a pub (just for a change), ending up in some random one and having a great time! A rock band plays live in a truly engaging way, everyone dances and pulls everyone else in, and people drink to no end. It's our first evening in a real Irish pub, which has nothing similar, sorry to say, to the ones in Cagliari that pass themselves off as such! And of course there are real Irish here, who drink litres of Guinness, the famous dark beer that has become a national symbol and which we can't avoid if we want to get into the spirit of the place!

Cork; Bantry; Ring of Kerry; Killarney

In the morning we dedicate a few hours to visiting the city by day, and in particular to the Gothic cathedral we saw yesterday, which by day looks even more beautiful and majestic. We go inside to admire the imposing naves and the splendid mosaics, take a few photos and resume our journey.

Having left Cork we continue inland toward the North-West, cutting at a certain point to the coast toward Bantry, a cheerful and very hospitable and touristy little seaside town. We stroll for half an hour among the characteristic narrow streets and colourful little houses, reaching the small harbour, and we eat at a sort of local inn, then resume the journey toward one of the five famous peninsulas of the South-East: the Ring of Kerry.

Unfortunately the day doesn't cooperate, the continuous rain prevents us from getting far from the car and taking photos. We spend the whole evening doing the loop around the peninsula, and the glimpses of scenery we see during the brief stops and along the way are truly beautiful.

Late in the evening we arrive tired in Killarney, park the car and walk around among the extraordinary colourful and lively little streets of the village, stopping to ask at a few hostels about availability for the night. The centre is all full, so we move a bit to the outskirts and find a nice one with a truly eccentric woman managing it. Our room is named "Flinstones" with the cartoon characters drawn on the door, that says it all!

Killarney National Park; Ross Castle; Muckross House

Up bright and early we immediately go to rent a bicycle to visit Killarney's main attraction: the vast National Park, fully equipped with a map from the hostel.

The entrance to the park is extraordinarily evocative and we make it all the way to Ross Castle through a succession of beautiful landscapes with every kind of greenery, marshes, little lakes.

Ross Castle stands right on the park's main lake, where you can also take a boat trip. We go in to visit the castle, but frankly inside it's not the best, the rooms are almost empty and the guide gives explanations only in very fast English that, unfortunately, we struggle to grasp. On the way out a nice surprise awaits us: a real downpour forces us to run back to the hostel soaked and return the bicycles. But we certainly won't give in to "a little" water...

After drying our clothes with the hairdryer (what a state we're in, huh?) we go back to storm the National Park, walking all the way to Muckross House. The route is beautiful and shows a tiny part of the wonderful park skirting the lake. I reckon it takes at least 3 days to visit it decently (they also organise guided treks and scenic jaunts by horse-drawn carriage).

Later we get back in the car and try in vain to find a waterfall, also inside the National Park but on the opposite side. We don't find the fateful waterfall, but we end up on a very narrow, isolated and remote road in the interior, where we get to truly appreciate what wild Ireland is like, where nature reigns supreme and civilisation struggles to arrive. The Bed & Breakfast exists spectacularly even here, leaving us open-mouthed, near what's perhaps the only building for miles around: a farm!

For the night we reserve the best of ourselves, having a lovely chat much more with gestures than with words with the strange girl who looks like a scout on a mission and runs the hostel, uniquely likeable. She generously tries to explain the best places to go out in the evening, even drawing a map, and right after we put her advice into practice around a few pubs! We find a wonderful one with an exceptional band (which will always stay in my heart) playing a very particular genre of music called Celtic rock, made up of not only the classic accordion and the legendary little tin whistle but keyboards, bass and drums...

After half an hour spent sitting on a raised platform in the venue, alone and absorbed in listening to that divine music, I nearly burst into tears from how moving and engaging it was! In a flash I understand that this is and will be a truly legendary and unique trip, one that will leave a deep mark on my soul and my memories! But it's not over, in fact the fun has only just begun: after the ecstasy of the first songs the music picks up the pace and becomes engaging, the band urges people to dance, I move closer to the stage where they're playing and there are Carlo and Nicola, and together we start dancing, mimicking the typical Irish dances (which are actually similar to the Sardinian ones!), arm in arm and swept up by the other young people in the pub! An extraordinary experience where it no longer matters who you are, where you come from, whether you've ever danced in your life or hav

e never met an Irish person, whether you're handsome or ugly, whether and how others judge you: the only imperative is to dance and have fun!!!

After the band's Celtic rock music ends reluctantly, and I even buy the CD album of their splendid songs, a fantastic souvenir to take home to remember this evening, the disco starts. And then off you go into the wild crowd, with people grabbing you arm in arm again and throwing you in the middle to dance up a storm, forming a circle of ten or more people!

Needless to say, Killarney has stayed right in my heart and I think it's without a doubt one of the most beautiful and magical towns in all of Ireland, absolutely unmissable.

Dingle; Limerick

The next day we visit another of the five peninsulas of the South-East called Dingle, just above the Ring of Kerry. I enjoy it much more, with its gentle, very green hills, a few little coves set among the high rocks, where the ocean waves create dozens of metres of shoreline. We reach a little beach going down a steep little road and, excited like children, we touch the ocean for the first time! (We poor Sardinians are used "only" to the Mediterranean Sea...).

After lunch the weather worsens dramatically and a storm sweeps over us while we walk on a promontory along the coast. I've never seen anything like it in my life, an extremely strong wind makes it difficult even to stand upright and defeats the force of gravity of the water, preventing a stream's waterfall from falling and making it go back upward and then fall backward... I had never seen an upside-down waterfall with the water falling... upward?!? I can barely hold my video camera in my hand and I shoot some shaky footage with the lens wet, but beautiful, because these moments are truly exciting and won't happen again! It feels like being alone against all the fury of nature! Then the ocean has its say, with waves as high and vast as the entire nearby town and kilometres of white foam. All this is documented with a photo taken in truly extreme conditions!

We spend the whole day doing the Dingle loop and for the night we stop in Limerick. It's a sad city, so grey and gloomy, and although it's true that it's a large industrial centre, it doesn't even feel like being in Ireland, even the streets are deserted at night, something truly unusual on an island like this! This time, to restore ourselves properly, we choose a Bed & Breakfast instead of a hostel, and after asking around a bit we find a very nice one on a street where there are quite a few. I've noticed that it's quite common in Irish towns to find streets where B&Bs or hostels are concentrated, so it's worth looking there right away without wasting time.

A very kind gentleman shows us the room, big, spacious and well furnished, with four comfortable beds and a nice bathroom stocked with everything: just what we needed after a tiring day!

Cliffs of Moher; The Burren; Galway

One of the most interesting advantages of a B&B is that a generous and succulent breakfast is always included, which we take ample advantage of. They bring us everything, from rusks with butter and jam, to bacon and fried egg, from tea to coffee with milk, and our breakfast turns into a real lunch! The kind owner also gives us some tips on places to see, providing us with brochures on various attractions.

After loading the car with our suitcases, we immediately abandon the grey Limerick and head north toward the famous Cliffs of Moher, which have become a tourist symbol of Ireland. Everything appears calm and normal when we arrive by car at the car parks, you can barely make out the sea and the green valleys, but as soon as we take a few steps, past the tourist kiosk with the usual postcards and knick-knacks of every kind, behold: astonishment suddenly appears on our faces: a breathtaking scene strikes our eyes!

The green meadows plunge sheer into the ocean in a vertical wall of over 200 metres, no railings, no limits, just a path that skirts the Cliffs from our right to our left. Needless to say, it's worth going both ways, but first you have to try the real thrill, the adrenaline overdose: leaning out from the balcony!! Yes, because on a sort of platform you can walk and lean out to see beyond.

You absolutely have to do it, so following the example of other tourists, we get down on all fours (given the strong wind) and crawl on hands and knees until we reach the edge, the extreme limit, where with one glance and with enormous excitement mixed with fear you lean out over the perfectly vertical cliff! A few centimetres more and it's a 200-metre fall, guys, this is no joke! Below, the ocean rages showing its full power against the basaltic rock and creating plays of foam: a unique emotion, useless to try to describe it!

After this adrenaline rush, we walk along the left side, take heaps of photos and film the whole spectacular panorama. At times the sky is completely covered with clouds and at times the sun comes out, making the colours of the ocean and the intense green that starts from the meadows and reaches down to the sea vivid and wonderful, while the strong wind is constant and doesn't stop blowing for a second. Luckily at least today it's not raining.

We head back and go to the other side, where a tower once used as a lookout stands, and from where you can climb up and enjoy a 360° view of the Cliffs, observing the details in the distance with a pay-per-use binocular.

Having reluctantly left this unique spectacle of nature, we head toward another region to see another singular landscape, that of the Burren. On the way we stop at a cave we saw in a brochure, whose name I don't remember though (just as well). It doesn't turn out to be a great choice, since the best thing we see is the waiting room before the guided tour... The cave is incredibly bare, there's practically nothing. We walk a lot only to see empty walls, but the final treat is at the back of the cave, when with stratospheric lighting we finally notice the gem of the place: a stalactite barely a few dozen centimetres high that seems dozens of metres tall from how much it's been inflated by the guides and camouflaged by the lights...

but come on, are you kidding? If these people come to Sardinia they'd build an amusement park inside our caves! A stalactite like that is the most banal thing you can find on our island, I might even have a similar one down in my cellar...

Jokes aside, a bit disappointed by this attraction, we finally continue toward the Burren, which is a region made up of several mountains and valleys where there is absolutely nothing beyond the rocks, in a typically lunar landscape! No plants, no life, nothing... just rocks! We're tempted to ask about some guide, since they organise real treks in this region, but it's already late, so we drive along a few back roads, ending up in the middle of a herd of cows that luckily move "politely" to let us through. We stop in a valley of the Burren and take photos on this ground of bare stones, completely stark, desolate and singular, watching the sunset on the moon!

For the night we move further north to Galway, one of the most famous tourist towns in Ireland, chosen by students from all over the world to learn English. Unfortunately we see it only briefly and in a hurry, while it would certainly deserve a more thorough stop, and we stay the night in a hostel.

Connemara National Park; Killemore Abbey; Sligo

Up bright and early, we immediately set off toward Connemara, stopping along the way at the castle of Augh... (an unpronounceable name). To our regret it's closed, but since there's no one around we think it a good idea to sneak in through the walls and take a peek...

An hour later we enter the Connemara region, famous for its typically autumnal colours which, reflected in the countless little lakes, create a truly romantic atmosphere! A great number of painters and poets have drawn inspiration from this area. Very beautiful just to drive through, but a walk becomes obligatory in the National Park. We park the car at the entrance and take the park map where some trails are marked. We first take the one that climbs toward the upper part, fully appreciating the local flora and fauna, feeding the horses, and enjoying the splendid panorama against the backdrop of the lakes and the autumnal colours of the woods, then complete the loop by descending into the lower part, observing the robins and the little waterfalls. The park is definitely smaller than the one in Killarney and the scenic loop takes about a couple of hours.

Having left the National Park we moved, a few kilometres further on, to the beautiful Killemore Abbey, today turned into a convent of nuns, but visitable in some of its parts. The structure stands in an exceptional and truly evocative spot, nestled against a wooded slope and practically on the lake. The rain makes it all even more fairy-tale-like, creating a halo of mist that fades into the landscape. The tranquillity and serenity here are supreme, you take a step back in time. Welcoming us inside Killemore Abbey is a nun, with typically English manners and very kind, who as soon as she hears our Italian accent transforms... into an Italian! She changes everything, her manner, her speech, and starts conversing very well with us in our language. We're left astounded by this nun's culture, who knows how many languages she speaks!

Once the visit to the abbey is over, we continue our tour of Ireland, moving toward the North-East, and after a few hours of very heavy and persistent rain we reach Sligo, a cheerful town full of young students. We find a hostel with an owner who turns out to be truly a character unique in the world: he teases us for hours (but he's dead serious!) with his stories about America, the job he did for the President, his contacts with Italian politicians and so on... but when he claims that Berlusconi stayed in his hostel for a few days and moreover in our very room, number 5, well guys... what a thing! A true legend!

Our room is incredibly small, you can barely squeeze between the four bunk beds, but the kitchen can be used well and is very handy. We think it a good idea to delight the likeable and singular owner, along with a few other guests that evening, with a nice plate of pasta alla carbonara and a few slices of meat. We eat in the lounge, filming with the video camera the legendary gems the gentleman tells us one after another; of course we don't understand everything, but enough to have a good laugh!

After dinner we go out and ask a girl on the street for information about a nice little place open late, where you can drink and dance. She sends us to a sort of disco-pub, with two huge bouncers at the door, who to our astonishment make no demands to let us in and we don't even pay any cover charge. After a few obligatory Guinnesses the music immediately swept us up, and we ended up dancing for hours among a wild crowd of young people in total, engaging fun that... can't be told!

Donegal; Letterkenny

In somewhat pitiful conditions after the wild night, we resume our journey heading toward Donegal, the wildest and least inhabited land in Ireland. After passing a few little villages we skirt the ocean, spotting in the distance some very evocative and imposing cliffs: we read in Nicola's guidebook that they are the highest in Europe at 300 metres high! Further on we stop at one of the biggest and most famous beaches in the area, where people stroll along the shoreline of dozens of metres created by the very long ocean waves. Here in fact it's usual for the beaches to be very wide, and the difference with the typical Mediterranean ones is obvious.

So we take the inland road, and continue toward the North-East through splendid glimpses of scenery and valleys, until we reach Letterkenny for the night, a nice little town strategically located on the border between the EIRE and Northern Ireland. We choose a B&B for the night, really nice, with a big room and a bathroom that has nothing to envy of a hotel's (in fact in the northern countries many B&Bs practically replace two- and three-star hotels as a category).

We have dinner in our room, making do with a few things bought at the markets, and afterward Nicola and I, rather tired, go out for a walk to see the little town, while Carlo can't resist the temptation of the comfortable and warm bed in the B&B, abandoning us to our fate! We go into a pub for the usual Guinness, then walk around looking for a nightclub since at 23:00 the ordinary pubs close.

To our immense surprise we find near the town centre an enormous disco, exaggeratedly out of proportion for a town of this size! And with even greater astonishment we notice the beautiful people who frequent it, starting with the car park packed to the brim with sports cars and super luxurious ones... the land of the rich? We don't quite understand how things work, but many of these people are certainly English crossing the border and coming here to have fun. Even the look of the young people is a whole other thing, they're dressed to the nines and fashionable, the girls look like models strutting down a runway.

And this is decidedly unusual in Ireland since here fashion isn't part of the culture like it is for us in Italy, generally people dress comfortably without paying much attention to their look, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and off you go (you also have to keep in mind the enormous American influence on the Irish and they too, I suspect, know very little about fashion, huh?). Even though we're dressed normally we still have no problem getting in, the usual ID is more than enough, but we're surprised for the first time to have to wait in line.

The logical consequence of the difference in atmosphere doesn't take long to show itself anyway: beautiful people, beautiful girls, all beautiful, but cold, incredibly colder than usual... could it be because there are many English people? Could it be because we're all dressed up? Who knows the reason, but the typical Irish evening where everyone pulls everyone else in and anything goes was truly missing: much more fun than just going dancing!

The Antrim coast; Giant's Causeway; Belfast

After a few minutes of walking we cross the border into the Northern Ireland we had been dreading. In fact, given what you read about the attacks, what you hear about the political and religious divisions in these areas, and considering that throughout our whole trip we still don't know what police cars look like since we've never encountered one, we expect to find them all here: checkpoints, roadblocks, police. But we're soon proven wrong and astonished by the fact that there's nothing! Nothing at all, we keep travelling without a care, without even noticing that we're crossing this border, and only the slight change in the architecture of the houses tells us that we're now in Northern Ireland.

Our destination is the eighth natural wonder of the world, as our guidebook calls it, the Giant's Causeway. It owes its name to an old legend, quite fanciful, but it gives you the idea. The feature of this stretch of land facing the ocean is made up of perfectly hexagonal basalt rock columns, which create a truly singular and unique landscape. Something similar exists in Scotland and Iceland too, but I don't know if on this scale. It's incredible to think that nature goes to such lengths to sculpt these rocks so perfectly, since the phenomenon comes from the combination of many factors together, such as the basaltic composition of the rock, the acidic composition of the soil and erosion from the weather.

After travelling several kilometres along the coast amid magnificent views of the ocean, we follow the signs for the Giant's and leave the car in the designated car park. The tourist attraction is guaranteed, and the facility you enter is complete and well organised: there's a dining hall, the little shop selling every kind of souvenir, and so on. But it's only a sort of entrance, since the Giant's Causeway is still far away. You can even get there by bus, but I'd say that's ridiculous, because the whole coast is truly spectacular and beautiful and deserves a proper walk. A big map of the whole coastal area shows the various paths where you can stroll freely and enjoy the view. Unfortunately, some points can only be visited from June to September in good weather, and this prevents us from seeing the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which connects a small island to the mainland: a real shame!

So we set off on our walk along the coast towards the famous causeway, on a very windy day but without rain, in fact with beautiful sunshine and blue sky. When I say very windy, I mean that in the open panoramic spots you could barely stand up... but luckily the path is all below the coast, it's us who try our luck on some hill to enjoy the splendid view! The landscape takes on really beautiful features: the cliffs are very green right down to the ocean and at times take on canyon shapes, at times they're sculpted with walls of tall hexagonal-style columns, and when you get near the ocean it happens that a huge amount of foam accumulated among the rocks suddenly flies up, thanks to some freak wave and the wind, giving the feeling that it's snowing!

After about half an hour we arrive at the famous causeway, a little hill on the sea made up only of these unique hexagonal rocks, on which it's great fun to walk and climb, or sit to observe the view and the ocean. An absolutely unmissable attraction! We take a ton of photos and continue further on, where the path splits into one stretch that runs along the ocean and another, the one we take, that climbs up the mountain wall and lets you enjoy a magnificent view of the Giant's Causeway and the coast from above.

The whole coast of Antrim, in the far north-east of Ireland, really deserves to be seen.

Once this unforgettable experience is over, we return to the entrance where we refresh ourselves with a hot tea and a nice slice of cake, and then get back in the car heading for Belfast, where we're absolutely determined to see what this city, so well known for its clashes, its attacks, its bombs, is like.

The first impressions are truly sad, as we expected. It's impossible to describe the heavy atmosphere you breathe in this place, it's all so strange and dark. The city is a fortified stronghold, huge armoured cameras everywhere, on the buildings, on the gates, pedestrian crossing bridges that look like tunnels with barbed wire all around, walls dividing the neighbourhoods, the blocks, the law enforcement barracks looks like a military base at war, with watchtowers and machine guns aimed everywhere.... incredible to think that normal people live here.

Anyway, we find a place to sleep without any particular problem and decide to wait until tomorrow to visit the city in the daylight.

Belfast

We spend the morning strolling a bit around the city. The centre is surrounded by walls and at curfew time, at night, it gets closed. At these daytime hours, though, everything seems calm, people walk normally along the streets, do their shopping, you run into school pupils coming out of school, it almost seems like a truly normal life. A shame that every now and then you come across churches destroyed by bombs (I mean roofless ruins blackened and riddled with holes by the explosions), armoured police vans armed like war chariots speeding through the streets alongside ordinary cars, grey and absolutely isolated neighbourhoods where walking around with a video camera, mobile phones and cameras is definitely not a good idea (here was truly the only time we were quite scared).

The festive and joyful Ireland has suddenly vanished and we find ourselves in a place outside of time and space, with absolutely unreal appearances. No more brightly coloured little houses, the cheerfulness of the people, the amusing drunks at night; in Belfast the houses are grey, the people gloomy and there are even signs drastically forbidding drinking after a certain hour, on pain of a colossal fine or straight to jail!

After passing through the gates that mark off the centre, we continue on foot towards the more outlying neighbourhoods, following the main road, fairly busy with cars. We pass alongside the police headquarters, a huge military compound with walls several metres high, barbed wire, watchtowers and cameras, which give you the feeling of being in a sad war film.

Further on we cross a pedestrian bridge that connects the road to a neighbourhood, entirely covered in barbed wire on the sides and above our heads. From here you can see a general overview of the urban layout of these housing blocks, which appears truly bewildering. Small blocks, in groups of a few houses, are repeatedly fenced off as in a game of Chinese boxes: the small circle is part of a bigger one which in turn is part of an even bigger one, and so on. The message really seems to be that whatever happens, it's possible to isolate the individual neighbourhoods and cut them off from the rest of the city...

We continue on into another block with grey and poorly kept buildings, at times truly decaying, in total desolation: there's not a living soul around, and this is not a nice situation to experience in these places, so we decide to return to the busier centre and leave pale Belfast behind.

You certainly can't say it was a nice experience, and we knew it. But it was good to do it, because you see so many things and feel different sensations that really make you think. It's a part not only of Ireland but of the whole world that needs to be known to make you realise certain realities that you can barely imagine by reading the papers or watching some documentary, but which are quite another thing experienced first-hand.

from 16 to 21: Dublin

Before lunchtime we leave Belfast and head straight South for the last stop of our trip: Dublin. The first thing we look for is accommodation, so we can drop off our bags, return the car at the airport and come back light to the centre by bus. We drive around a bit aimlessly and in the end we choose the Abram hostel, which is on Gardiner Street, a street with a wide choice of accommodation, full of Bed & Breakfasts and with several hostels (there's also the bus that comes here directly from the airport but I don't remember the number...). The Abram is a very nice hostel, clean, cheap (more expensive than the hostels in the rest of Ireland but you have to compare it with Dublin prices), it has a kitchen, rooms with bathrooms and offers a range of interesting services.

The five days we spend in Dublin are decidedly different from the first ones: we go in for city tourism, walks along the streets full of very young kids and shops of every kind, the relaxing visit of monuments and museums. Needless to say, the capital already looks quite different from any other Irish city, including Cork, which is the second. The remarkable economic and demographic boom of these years makes you breathe the air of a metropolis, everyone's racing from one side to the other, students and workers, in a rather pleasant chaos of young people pouring onto the streets at any hour. And the nicest thing is that we're in the youngest city in Europe, don't forget it.

Dublin can be visited, tourism-wise, in a few days and the centre isn't very big. We see the main attractions that probably every tourist who comes here visits:

- The Temple Bar district, with its bright colours, characteristic little shops, and an endless number of pubs that make it the most popular centre for going out at night (absolutely unmissable).

- The Guinness Brewery, that is the factory of the best-selling and most exported beer, now become a symbol of Ireland.

- Trinity College, the most renowned Irish university, very beautiful and huge, with students who come here to study from every part of the world.

- O'Connell Street, the crucial point and hub of the city centre (also for traffic!)

- Dublin Castle, though it's a bit of a stretch to call it that, given the mishmash of colours and architectural styles with which it was renovated or rebuilt over the centuries.

- St Stephen's Green, a really lovely park located in the neighbourhood of the same name, where there's also a beautiful shopping centre that we visit for an entire evening at our leisure.

As for nightlife, you have to take into account the fact that the Irish eat very early and from 18:00 onwards they're already out drinking and having fun in the pubs. We go out several times in the Temple Bar area, where the pubs are packed with people and tourists and an impressive quantity of different cultures and styles mix together.

The Kitchen, the U2 venue, is very famous, and it's a sort of underground club: we go twice. The first time we have a nice evening with acceptable music, even though the guys and girls are truly "wasted" and in indescribable condition (you get an excellent picture of the whole thing especially by going to the toilet...); the second time the music is instead rather strange and not suited to our tastes, and on top of that we risk losing our jackets, which we very naively leave on the little sofas without watching them (though we did this all the other times in the small towns of Ireland and nothing ever happened).

We had a shock when we couldn't see them anymore, not so much for the value of the jackets themselves, but because outside the freezing cold is raging and without them pneumonia is guaranteed! Luckily we get talking with the girl at the counter, a friendly Neapolitan who's lived here for several years and recognises our Italian origin from two words I say to her at the till: "Three Guinness" (this goes to show just how good my English is, then...). She goes to check in the little room where you leave the cloakroom for a fee and out come our warm jackets, which had been taken by the guy on duty from the little sofas precisely so they wouldn't be stolen... who knows why we're not very convinced by that, and anyway we gladly pay the cloakroom fee to get our belongings back.

Another evening we try the Temple Bar, the pub with the same name as the district, which with its characteristic red colour is one of the most popular of all and is always packed with people. Strolling along the inner streets, though, there's only the agony of choice, the venues follow one after another and you just have to pick one following your instinct for whichever appeals to you most.

At 23:00 though many close and people move to the disco-pubs or real clubs, which in any case generally don't go past three in the morning. Precisely for this reason at this hour the streets are teeming with people, and it goes without saying that practically no one is sober! It's extraordinarily fun to wander around at this moment, you see the strangest things and breathe a sort of euphoric and feverish atmosphere that's truly unusual! There are obviously endless venues outside the Temple Bar too, but as often happens it would be better to know them beforehand or rely on someone who knows them well. For example, one evening we end up in a mega club carved out of a deconsecrated church, the Temple Theatre. A truly strange environment, frequented by lots of young kids and with excessively techno music.

We get searched from top to bottom at the entrance by two enormous bouncers, even in the inner pockets of my wallet, and once inside we're stunned by the music. It's not much fun for us, but probably for fans of the techno genre it could be a legendary evening since the DJ is worshipped like a God! There are actually three of them, and they follow one another during the evening; at each change an explosion of applause and a roar of shouting announce the entrance of the next one, who enters like a superstar amid stratospheric light effects and bass hits that punch you in the stomach with the same violence as a boeing taking off ten metres away from you...

At a certain point in the evening, while Nicola and I watch all this open-mouthed, we notice from afar Carlo's still head observing the stage and standing out incredibly from the mass of hundreds of kids moving in waves in a perfectly symmetrical way across the large hall, giving the impression of a real "sea of people": an absolutely hilarious scene!

Anyway, even though at the Temple Theatre evening we don't manage to make friends with anyone given the strange people who frequent it, getting to know, approaching, or talking to someone on a typical evening in Dublin (as in the rest of Ireland) even without speaking much English is the easiest thing in the universe. The opposite is practically impossible. This is not the place for the shy or the reserved, here it makes no sense to be. Here you talk to the neighbour drinking his beer beside you, you dance with kids and adults who stopped being kids long ago, you meet people from all over the world: in a single evening this is our résumé at the Turkey's pub, where we spend our last fantastic and unforgettable Friday night before leaving: Colombians, Venezuelans, Japanese, Australians, Greeks, Spaniards, Italians, Swedes, of course Irish, and honestly others I don't remember.

We leave the venue at three in the morning and go back to the hostel getting up to all sorts of mischief on the way back.

Return

We have the flight at five, and staying awake for two hours after an evening like that once back in the room is no easy task, so I sit on the floor in the dark so as not to fall asleep in bed and I think back on this extraordinary trip made with my best friends. We had a great time, we truly formed a legendary trio and I feel with a firm conviction inside me that a series of extremely positive factors and moods will make this trip unrepeatable: this magical land, its wonderful people, the suggestive landscapes and the breathtaking cliffs, the pubs and my friends with whom I travelled, everything was incredibly perfect and I'd pay anything to be able to go back to the first day! And so while I'm reflecting, five o'clock comes. I force awake Carlo and Nicola, who are in worse shape than me, and we call a taxi from the hostel to take us to the airport.

Our legendary trip ends here, after sixteen days of absolute fun and unforgettable emotions in a magical and wonderful land such as this surprising Ireland.

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