Daniele Somenzi's Ireland

Ireland Nicola and I set off with British Midland from Nice in France bound for London Heathrow, then to take the connection for Dublin. The second flight, I must say, shook me up a bit; it wobbled on landing and upset my digestion somewhat.

It's raining, and it's not the greatest welcome for a new place you're visiting.

We take the usual rental car, this time a Nissan Micra, and immediately set off for a little ride out of the city.

The sea is very unwelcoming and rough as well as dirty; it looks like the Cinquale in winter.

In the evening we enter Dublin and find a hostel for the night, then go out for a short walk and Nicola drags me into a lesbian and gay bar, if that's how you write it.

My goodness how strange it is to see 2 men kissing, but I appreciated the two girls next to me doing the same; I thought to myself: what a waste.

In the city's pubs, in the evening, rivers of beer flow; what a distorted tradition of life, to become merry first you have to destroy your liver and then have fun without judgement.

But can't you also have fun without alcohol or smoke? It would be enough to spend the money for cigarettes, joints or whatever and for alcohol on a nice plane ticket and there you go.

The next morning a pale sun comes at our face on the horizon while I drive south, and it's very annoying. Meadows everywhere. At Cork I enter a travel agency to ask how much the plane ticket to Vietnam costs; maybe from Ireland it costs much less than from Italy, but that's not the case, and we continue until we sleep in a guest house near Killarney.

The high Cliffs of Moher are a beautiful attraction; right near the precipice a little stream is pushed upwards by the strong wind coming from below. Here, inside a little souvenir house, both Nicola and I find his and also my surname in a big book of surnames; fancy that.

We continue to Shannon, where there's also a famous airport where many airlines in the past, before making the great crossing to the United States, stopped to refuel, being the last bastion of Europe excluding Iceland.

At Galway, we decide not to go all the way to Belfast, too far, and cut right towards the capital, where in the evening we're back at the same hostel.

Conclusion: I didn't like Ireland, and I doubt I'll go back; a thousand times better is New Zealand. The British Midland flight lands at Nice after a change in London, in the evening, where my Fiat Tipo awaits me in the very expensive car parks.

bye bye