We heard that the Irish were absolutely splendid hosts for tourists, and that’s certainly been the truth. Not everything is perfect, of course. But Ireland is a wonderful place to visit.

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GALWAY, Ireland — We climbed into an Uber on Saturday morning for a ride into downtown Galway, and we had quite the surprise. An Irishman was our driver.

Like a lot of places, most Uber drivers in Ireland are internationals. But Tom was an Irishman, and he had his radio going, and the music was catchy and lively. Bluegrass, almost, in style, only with more soul.

I thought to myself, this sounds like an Irish version of country music. So we asked Tom to describe it. He said, “Irish country.”

What a place. Great people. Great settings. Great scenes. Great music. Great food. Great beauty. Our six days in Ireland have been fantastic.

We heard that the Irish were absolutely splendid hosts for tourists, and that’s certainly been the truth. Not everything is perfect, of course. But Ireland is a wonderful place to visit. Comparatively inexpensive, once you get here. Easy to get around. Lots to see and do. Plenty of helpful people.

On Tom’s radio Saturday, we heard an Irish version of “Rocky Top” and an Irish version of Johnny Cash. My sister-in-law, Carolyn, at first thought it was Johnny Cash.

An Irish tour guide tells a Choctaw Nation story, unbeknownst that the great-grandson of a Choctaw chief is in the first row.

More from @BerryTramel: https://t.co/5nWoWSSmzH

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) May 2, 2024

Many of the street performers in Galway produce that cool Irish sound. 

Sixty percent of the way through our trip, I can highly recommend an Ireland vacation. And since Saturday was our slowest day — we meandered around Galway’s weekly Saturday market of crafts and foods, then visited the Galway Irish Crystal store — I thought I’d take the time to just list some of the things our traveling party of six has observed about this land we’ve always wanted to visit.

Ireland is a dual-language nation. Who knew?

I knew Ireland had a Gaelic heritage, but silly me, I didn’t know that Gaelic, which in Ireland is referred to as the Irish language, was all that much different from English. But it is. I can no more understand Irish than I can German. And I can’t understand German.

The vast majority of Irish don’t use the Irish language, but a few pockets of the nation still have many people who speak Irish. Including Galway.

Until the 1800s, the entire island of Ireland — which consists today of Ireland and Northern Ireland — spoke only Irish. But English gradually shoved out Irish as the predominant language.

Irish is taught in many schools, and more than half of Irish citizens say they know the language, but only a small fraction report ever using it. We barely noticed Irish in Dublin. But in Galway, it is quite common.

The Irish seem to have a lot of respect for America, not just Americans. Our tour guide to the Cliffs of Moher the other day proudly spoke of President Kennedy speaking at Galway’s Eyre Square in June 1963, five months before his assassination. The Galway city council renamed the square in Kennedy’s honor, though everyone still calls it Eyre Square.

Ireland has a low crime rate, and its regular police officers, the Guardia, do not carry guns. I’m sure Ireland has all kinds of criminal justice issues. 

But Thursday, after we had lunch in Galway, Trish the Dish’s cousin, Donnetta Nelson, discovered her necklace no longer was around her neck. We had ventured only a few storefronts from the pub, so she and her husband, Gary, scurried back to the restaurant to look for it.

Donnetta didn’t find it anywhere, but the waitress assured her no one had taken it. If it was found, it would be returned, the woman said.

As we left the pub after the search, Donnetta spied the necklace lying on the sidewalk. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people had walked over it and past it. No one took it.

Saturday, as we strolled along a rocky beach on Galway Bay, Donnetta said she was most relieved that she didn’t have to worry about snakes. Having grown up in Pontotoc County, she knows a thing or two about snakes.

But it’s indeed true that Ireland has no snakes. Not necessarily because Saint Patrick drove them out of Ireland, but because the Ice Age killed them off, and being an island, Ireland offers no great way for the snakes to get here and repopulate.

Still, the story of Saint Patrick is fabulous. Brought to Ireland as a slave, he labored for six years, found a way to escape and return to England, only to feel the call to go back to Ireland and serve the Irish through the Catholic Church.

Ireland travelblog: The magnificient Cliffs of Moher & the ancient Inisheer Island. https://t.co/uTFX0TnqPP

— Berry Tramel (@BerryTramel) May 4, 2024

Smoking is way too prevalent in Ireland. Dublin, Galway, doesn’t matter. Way too much smoking and vaping. Come on people. You can give it up.

Spend any time at all outside Dublin, and you know why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle. Just a lush, green place.

We crashed a wedding Saturday night. Our Connemara Coast Hotel hosted weddings on both Friday night and Saturday night. It is not a big place. And after our beach stroll Saturday, we happened into a hallway where the wedding dinner was about to begin.

The bridal party was in a somewhat tight hallway, waiting to be introduced, and we didn’t want to shove our way past them. So we leaned against a wall and gave them passage. But we had to wait until they were called.

The best man and maid of honor were at the front of the line and planning their entrance strategy. The best man learned we were from the U.S. and joked that he would enter chanting “USA! USA!” He didn’t, but as he passed, and was about 15 feet from the doorway into the dinner, he shouted out three hearty “USAs!”

Virtually everyone you meet has some connection to the U.S. Our Uber driver Saturday has a sister living in New York. Our 20-year-old waitress Saturday night at the hotel pub, a law school student from just north of Galway with grandparents who speak no English, only Irish, has a great aunt living in Boston. And like I told you, Joel, our horse carriage driver on the lost-in-time island of Inisheer, went to Chicago as a young man to work in construction. Most everyone wants to visit America or has.

I guess I was the last person on Earth to not know about an Irish breakfast. 

An Irish breakfast consists of bacon (which over here is more like ham), sausage, eggs (often fried), potatoes, beans, soda bread or toast, tomatoes, mushrooms and white or black pudding. I’ll pass on black pudding, which is pig’s blood coagulated into sausage form. The white pudding is flat pork sausage.

I’ve had two Irish breakfasts on the trip. I completely salute the effort to widen the breakfast staples — mushrooms, beans, tomatoes — and good fried eggs are the work of craftsmen.

I knew the seafood would be great in Ireland, and I was right. I figured the beef stew in Ireland would be good, and it has been. But I had no idea the cheeseburgers would be big and tasty. And I’m still waiting to see my first corned-beef sandwich.

Ireland is like the rest of Europe. It needs more and better ice.

If you come to Ireland, please be careful of cars. Just because you don’t drive over here doesn’t mean the drive-on-the-left-side won’t get you. As a pedestrian, you have no idea how much you rely on instincts and muscle memory to navigate city streets. I dang near got hit by a bus the other day because I didn’t look the right direction for oncoming traffic.

We’re headed to Cork on Sunday morning, so more adventures will be coming our way, and I’ll be sharing them.