Passports: You will need a passport for this trip, so either check the one you currently have to make sure it does not expire prior to March 4, 2007, or apply immediately.

Recommended reading:

The Course of Irish History, ed. T. W. Moody & F. X. Martin. A collection of historical essays (one essay per major period) by eminent late-twentieth century Irish historians, solicited for a mid-1960s Irish television documentary series. Still authoritative, eminently readable.

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization. I'm just finished this and it's a terrific book, particularly for those interested in the "ancient" world: takes Ireland from the days of the Celts, Druids, Britons, & Picts (and the Roman Empire), through the missionary ministry of Patricius (St. Patrick) and into the medieval era. A lot more interesting than it might sound!

Terry Eagleton, The Truth about the Irish. A somewhat whimsical encyclopedia (A to Z) offering some good information, dispelling some myths, and telling some good jokes along the way.

Insight Guides, Dublin. Too heavy to take along on the trip (I think), but great for leafing through before going. Good literate essay on Irish culture and history. Lots of excellent photographs, well re-produced (thus the heaviness). Good suggestions about what to do and how to do it.

Two recent books on the Irish-American and American-Irish experience:

David Monagan, Jaywalking with the Irish. A book about an American family who, in the mid-90s decide to move from the Connecticut suburbs to Cork, Ireland. The first half of the book's great; the second half, not so great. Buy it used or check it out of a library.

Thomas Lynch, Booking Passage. America's (and Michigan's) most famous funeral director writes beautifully about dropping out of Oakland University in 1970 and traveling to County Clare to look up the last remaining Lynches there. Lots about the Detroit area Irish-American community and the sort of western Ireland life that is rapidly disappearing. Characteristically, Lynch lingers over deaths, tombs, funerals, and wakes. Not immediately or directly about Ireland itself -- in fact, not immediately or directly about any one thing: Lynch is a poet who happens, here, to be writing creative non-fiction prose, and the essays and the book as a whole move around more like a poem than an essay or, certainly, a travel book.

One could do worse than reading some of the stories in James Joyce's The Dubliners; and I'd suggest that you prepare for Sligo by reading some William Butler Yeats. We'll be reciting The Lake Isle of Innisfree" in unison on the banks of Lough Gill; and under Ben Bulben (at Yeats's grave), we'll read Under Ben Bulben.

For your anticipation & amusement, here are links to some of the places we'll be visiting in Dublin:

En route to and from Sligo, we will visit the Famine Museum at Strokestown. While in Sligo, we will visit various sites associated with William Butler Yeats (the Lake Isle of Inishfree, and Ben Bulben

Getting about – Both Dublin, Galway, and Sligo are highly walkable towns, with extensive bus systems serving to move people about, especially between the city centres and the suburbs. Dublin has been developing a new light rail system with a limited route, primarily serving the business community. We will use tour and private coaches to and from the airport, for daylong excursions, for the trip across country to Sligo, and to tour the area around Sligo; otherwise, our plans are primarily pedestrian. Please consult with me if you think non-pedestrian arrangements will be more convenient for you.

Free time will be available for you to pursue your own interests: the Guinness Brewery, the Jameson Distillery (which will be hosting the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival while we're in town), the Bram Stoker Dracula Experience, Dublin's Rock 'n Roll Tour (see the Baggot Inn where U2 started! or the Kitchen nightclub in the Clarence Hotel they now operate! see the Bad Ass Cafe where Sinead worked!), the Viking Splash tour, Grafton Street shopping and buskers, and the nightlife of Temple Bar. In order to do some planning for your own activities, the most helpful resource on the web is probably Visit Dublin, the site of the Dublin Tourism Board. Select "Events" to get information about concerts, sporting events, festivals, and theatre. Select "Entertainment" to get a more thorough listing of music venues. In order to get information on excursions out of Dublin, you'll need to go rather deep into the site and then offsite: you can select "Dublin's Top 10" to get a full array of possible destinations both inside and outside the city, with links to tour operators and information; or you can select "Tours and Trails" and then select Tour Operators to get a listing of tour operators and their tours.

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Weather – The CIA (yes, that CIA) describes the climate in Ireland as “temperate maritime; modified by North Atlantic Current; mild winters, cool summers; consistently humid; overcast about half the time.” Though Ireland is, in fact, roughly parallel in latitude to northern Michigan, the North Atlantic Current warms the land and thus the atmosphere to such a degree that palm trees are not altogether uncommon landscaping features. Nonetheless, as an island, Ireland is subject to sudden storms and frequent rains (and rainbows) and cloudiness. Irish winters, though snow and even frosts are rare, are unpleasant, and winters usually last until mid-March, a couple of weeks after we’ll be visiting. (The official beginning of the beginning of the tourist “season” is March 1, smack dab in the middle of our visit.) The mean temperature in Dublin in February is 41 degrees (F), with an average daily duration of sunshine of 2.5 hours; in March, 43 degrees, with an average 3.6 hours of sunshine. In February and March, Dublin averages 2 inches of rain monthly – roughly the same as southeastern Michigan. Temperatures on the west coast are similar, but the rainfall is double. The upshot: pack warm, quick-drying clothes (wool; polypro, and the like), hats, a raincoat or poncho, and a sturdy umbrella. Accept wetness as an inevitability, and you’ll enjoy the one likely “fine” day all the more.

Click here for Dublin's current weather.

Click here for the Sligo weather forecast.

Money– Currency exchanges are available at the Dublin airport if you wish to convert American cash to Euros. For the most part, in order to get the lowest exchange rate, I suggest a.) using credit cards when possible,* to pay for goods and services, and b.) using ATM machines to draw money directly out of your stateside account and maintain your pocket cash. (Check with your bank to make sure that your card will work overseas; if your bank uses any of the major ATM systems (e.g., Cirrus), your card will work in most machines.) The one disadvantage of doing so is that you will not know, without checking your account via the web or waiting for your monthly statement to arrive, exactly how much you have withdrawn in dollars because you will have made the entire ATM transaction in Euros. Another minor issue is that if you have several sub-accounts, Irish ATMs may not allow you to select which one you are working with. The current exchange rate, ok for approximations, is 1 Euro = $1.29.

*Credit card alert! In my most recent credit card statement, I found that my credit card company (MBNA) has just recently begun to assess an "international fee" for charges outside of North America. I suggest that you determine whether or not your own credit card has a similar practice.

Purchases in Ireland: Ireland imposes a fairly standard EU VAT of about 17% on purchases in Ireland. The “Retail Export Scheme” allows you to recover this tax by documenting that the goods have been exported to a non-EU country (e.g., the United States). Exactly how this recovery will occur varies widely. In the most pedestrian of cases, you’ll pay the tax when you make the purchase, save the receipt along with a form you’ll be given, and then mail the form to the retail store upon your return to the US; they will then refund your tax. Some retailers can and will do paperwork themselves enabling them to not charge you the tax if and when you pay with a U.S. credit card. Still other retailers participate in a program which allows you to get your refund at the Dublin airport just before you depart. See the information available at Oasis for full details, and be sure to ask the retailer exactly how the refund will be managed.

On board the flight back to the United States, you’ll be given a customs declaration to fill out. Be sure to pack the goods you’ll declare separately and have your sales receipts handy. Returning U.S. citizens who have been away for 48 hours or more are allowed to bring back, once every 30 days, $800 worth of merchandise duty-free, as long as you bring them you you as accompanied baggage. You’ll be charged a flat rate of 5% duty on the next $1000 worth of purchases. Liquor and cigarettes are special cases: you may bring only one liter of alcoholic beverages and no more than 200 cigarettes duty free; you may bring more, but you will be taxed on it, and only the one liter and/or 200 cigarettes will be deducted from your $800 of eligible duty-free imports. You’ll be charged a flat rate of 5% duty on the next $1000 worth of purchases. The duty-free limit on gifts is $100. You cannot bring fresh food stuffs into the US; canned foods are allowed. For detailed information, see the U.S. Customs Service’s Know Before You Go.

Drinking – The legal drinking age in Ireland is 18. Pubs are traditionally the hubs of Irish social life throughout Ireland, and visiting a pub or two is an essential part of learning about Irish culture. Irish pubs, however, should be distinguished from “clubs,” in both the American and Irish sense, where the primary purpose is to “party.” Clubs are available largely in the Temple Bar area of Dublin, and are populated primarily by English and Dutch young people on holiday, who are tolerated by Dubliners as a sort of obnoxious economic necessity. Although the Irish have been associated with a propensity for “taking a drop,” in fact, more than half of today’s Irish population are tea-total (as is your faculty guide). In short, although spending time in a pub is a pleasant and distinctively Irish recreation (and we will go on a musical pub crawl on our last night in Dublin), conviviality rather than inebriation is the objective. Your observance of this cultural convention will be appreciated.

Personal security - Ireland’s economic boom has not uniformly affected the entire population: poverty persists and the resentment of the impoverished has increased, and thus, so has crime and drug addiction. Most of the crime, however, is self-inflicted; there is nowhere in Ireland the sort of propensity for pickpocketing or assaulting tourists that one finds in many other European cities. We will be staying out of the crime-ridden districts of Dublin and Sligo (because there’s nothing much to see there); both cities are well patrolled by Garda (police). On those occasions when we are not all together, I am asking, nevertheless, that we use a buddy system: always have someone else with you. Please don’t bring valuables on the trip. Leave cell phones, laptops, jewelry, high-end electronics at home.

Appliances – Our accommodations in Dublin, Galway, and Sligo will have kitchens facilities available if you’d like to cook a meal for yourself or heat up a snack. The hostels in Dublin and Galway have computer rooms with free internet access. (Dublin also has a number of high end internet cafes where you can get an hour of internet, a cup of good coffee, and a fine pastry for about four euos). Other power amenities which you might associate with hotels will not likely be available in Dublin, Galway, or sligo. If you bring your own (e.g., hair dryer, electric razor, battery charger), you will also need to bring adaptors and/or convertors with you:

In order to use Irish electricity, you will ordinarily need to take care of two different adjustments: 1.) Voltage conversion: Irish electricity runs at 220 volts; our appliances and so on are accustomed to 110 volts. You will need a transformer in order to limit the voltage and thus avoid frying your electronic device. (Note: Battery chargers ARE transformers, transforming current into stored energy. Your battery charger may, in fact, already be capable of handling 220 volts. Read the label.) Small appliances like radios, razors, battery chargers, etc. can normally operate with a 50 watt transformer. This is a heavy little clunk of metal. If your appliance is marked 60 Hz, and not 50/60 Hz, you run the risk of burning up something inside even when using a transformer. Heating devices like hair blowers and irons need a 1000 or 1600 watt "converter." The converter is a small electronic device which can only be used on appliances rated with equal power. My advice would be to leave these at home. Do not bother bringing electrical clocks or clock radios; the clocks will run slow on the reduced current. 2.) A plug adapter: Irish electrical sockets have an unusual three-prong arrangement.You can't plug and American plug into an Irish socket without an adapter.

Generally, my own advice would be to leave as much of your electronic apparatus at home as possible. I cannot advise you on where to purchase exactly the right converters and adapters. Different companies make different configurations, and it's all very confusing. I have heard that some good converters and adaptors are available at the international terminal at O'Hare, but I wouldn't count on it; nor would I count on a high degree of technical expertise or specificity of advice from the store sales staff.

Click here for the Photo gallery of the February 2006 tour.

Catch up on the local news with The Irish Times, through Ireland.com.

Check the guide to entertainment guides at Dublin.ie.

The Irish Emigrant online is the internet branch of a publication designed to keep the Irish (and Irish descendants) worldwide apprised of what's going on back home.

Live webcam, Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin:

For big inexpensive fun, give your friends and/or relatives the url to this webcam (http://www.nci.ie/ispy/) and tell them to look for you on camera on Friday, March 2, or Saturday, March 3: tell them what time to expect you (remember the five-hour time difference), and then go to Lower Gardiner Street and wave. (Or act out a scene from your favorite silent movie.)

The Irish Times weather cam on O'Connell Street Bridge. (Click your browser's refresh button to update this picture.):

For details, information, questions, and updates, email connery@oakland.edu

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January 15, 2007

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