When last we toured in Ireland, we found one of the most interesting parts to be the Dingle Peninsula. One aspect that’s noteworthy is that Dingle didn’t have a fishing industry until the Great Potato Famine, which largely depopulated Ireland in just four years. Dingle [...]

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Yes, today’s the most important day in the Irish calendar. Rather than post Yet More Irish Recipes, we here at the Underground thought we’d share some pictures from our last trip to Ireland, and also a bit of their humor:

Father O’Toole storms angrily into a pub in Limerick. As far as the eye can [...]

The Grand Irish Cross-Country Expedition and Pub (Grub) Crawl is over, but not forgotten. I’ve already shared the Irish Pub Cookbook with you, and I continue to enjoy its contents (and the food it presents). There’s another side to Irish cooking, though, and I’m learning to appreciate it as well: the common or ordinary [...]

A fairy-tale trip needs an enchanting guest house as a base of operations. We had ours: The Dunraven Arms Hotel in Adare, Co. Limerick. Founded in 1792, The Dunraven has everything a modern, quality hotel should have. More importantly, it has “quaint” built into its bones.

I knew the Dunraven from working trips to Ireland [...]

I’ve mentioned John Carey, our driver in Ireland, quite a bit the last few posts. Time to pay him his due in writing. The short version: He did a phenomenal job for us, and we’re grateful for his active assistance in forging strong memories during our trek.

I’ve known John for a few years now. [...]

Travel is such a pain, sometimes. We got up early and skipped breakfast, as we had a fairly early flight scheduled for our return to the States. (We didn’t want any breakfast, as we were afraid it would spoil our planned beef dinner on the plane.) PJ was slow to get started, and grumpy. [...]

We enjoyed one last, full Irish breakfast in the Maigue Restaurant this morning, then came the hard part: Saying goodbye to everybody. We’ve only been here a bit over a week, but somehow it feels like leaving family or something. Maybe that’s because the Dunraven Arms has treated us as family. Not the “inlaws [...]

This morning dawned gray and damp, which means it was later than normal before the birds began chirping outside our window. In fact it was nearly 4 A.M. before the serenade began! I guess they stayed in the pub too late or something, and just couldn’t bring themselves to start at 3:30 like the [...]

We got an early start today, as our plan would take us on the longest drive of the tour. We were heading down to County Kerry, to “run the ring” with all the tour buses and tourists. (We’re not tourists, you see; I got that hat and some shirts, so nobody can tell we’re [...]

John was waiting a bit early this morning, or else we were maybe a few minutes late getting our stuff together for the days touring. We had a five-minute delay while we stopped for batteries for my camera. Today’s agenda: The south of County Cork, including the seaside town of Kinsale, and a visit [...]