Jamison Whiskey, Blarney, Waterford, Rock of Cashel, Irish National Stud, St. Patricks, Book of Kells, and more.
How is this for a way to start off your day? The first thing you might notice about Nancy B., Edna Lee A., Trudy W., and Ric P. is that they are drinking shots. An even closer look shows no less than three shots of whiskey sitting in front of each. And that glass of water.
That is half of our taste testers at the end of our tour of the Jamison Irish Whiskey Distillery in Midleton, Ireland. The other half were the four B’s—Becky F., Bob B., another Bob B, and Bert K., our imbedded whiskey connoisseur. He said of the three tested—Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, and Jamison—the best was Jamison but he would still recommend Canadian Classic 12.
If you don’t think we had lots of fun and laughs at the Jamison, you don’t know these people. To top it off, our guide was Miss Bubbly Sprits of Ireland 
five years running. We weren’t two minutes into the tour before she was high-fouring with the lot of us. If you want to know her name, ask Betty who took a very, very close-up of her nametag.
Everyone’s distillery tour ticket included on the stub a coupon for a free glass of Jamison whiskey—and everyone cashed in the stub—some for a short glass straight up and some for a Jamison cocktail with ginger ale and lime.
We interrupt this blog for a brief commercial for Irish food and weather. Relatives and friends who visited Ireland in years past had told us they had a hard time finding food they liked. Either something has changed or they were expecting cheeseburgers and fries. Those on this tour pretty much agree that we’ve eaten very 
well—too well, probably, as we’ve surely added pound or five. We are especially fond of what they call bacon but we’d call ham. We asked some locals about it and those who had been to America were highly critical of our wimpy, thin bacon.
Oh, there seems to be one exception to our appreciation of Irish cuisine. No one is fond of black pudding—which
we take to be perhaps blood sausage. On the other end of the scale, we’ve each found at least one culinary delight we are especially fond of. For Rosemary it came at breakfast one morning when the server asked, “What would you like on your oatmeal? Milk, whiskey, or Bailey’s Irish Cream.” Don is concerned that she’ll get used to such decadence and his Bailey’s budget will increase considerably upon return home.
We were not surprised to see how popular Guinness beer is here, but honoring the spirit of this tour, many of us opted for another Irish favorite, Smithwick beer. I was surprised to see how popular Heineken is—every pub seems to have all three of these on tap. Guinness is headquartered in Dublin, and the family has been very 
generous with their profits, funding many public buildings and events.
Concerning the weather . . . When we arrived, Ireland was in the midst of the hottest stretch of weather they’d seen in a decade with daily highs in the low 80’s. And the southern half had gone 14 days without a trace of rain. That continued for our first 3 days here. Since then it has still been nice—warm enough with only occasional light showers. Most of us had packed wrong, under the assumption that the guide books were right about rain every day and high’s in the 60’s.
In addition to Jamison’s, Monday’s schedule included an obligatory stop at Blarney Castle. A few brave souls 
opted for the climb and the kissing, while the rest of us had lunch, shopped, and toured the gardens. As we left Blarney, tour guide Batt used the bus’s PA system to relay to the following story to those who did the kissing.
“I see that Blarney Castle made the local news last night. You know those guys who help you lean over backward to kiss the stone? Well one of those guys and his supervisor got into a tiff at closing time last night, and the supervisor fired him. He stormed off in a huff, but came back later that evening and peed on the Blarney Stone.” This story went over big with those who hadn’t kissed it.
The Irish National Stud. That’s the whole name. We got an extensive horse sex education at that expansive complex just outside Kildare, I can tell you. We shan’t recount all the details on this G-rated blog, but it suffices to say that when a mare’s owner pays between $6000 and $60,000 to have it bred to a high quality thoroughbred, the handlers don’t leave horse romance to chance. Great care is taken to ensure the safety of both animals—the walls of the action center [not the building’s official name] are padded, the floor is softened, and they are pampered with everything short of post-mating cigarettes.
The first stud horse we saw was named Big Bad Bob. What a coincidence! We had two of those on the tour.
Kay Brass was especially interested in the horses and their treatment at this commercial and apparently quite profitable operation. So were others among including the ladies you see in the photo below . These ladies insisted on having their photo taken with our guide Rob. Here we’ve blown-up the label on Rob’s shirt to help you understand their fascination with him.
Waterford Crystal. Now we know why it’s so expensive. The craftsmen who design, blow, cut, and polish crystal pieces must apprentice a minimum of five years—sometimes eight—before they’re allowed to work on their own. We walked through the process and were impressed with the craftsmanship and quality. We tried to get Bob to buy Jeannie the $60,000 crystal vanity set and he’d probably have done it, but she declined, saying it wouldn’t match the décor of their Panther Lake cabin.
After a night in Dublin (Ireland’s largest city, population 1.3 million), tours of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Book of Kells, we jumped onto the super highway for a straight shot across Ireland’s biggest river—the Shannon—the dividing line between east and west. We’ll spend two nights in Galway. It was along this freeway that we noted that when you’re traveling with 33 people on a 40 foot bus, a pit stop is a little more complicated than a quick swing off of I-80 into a Seven-Eleven for your wife.
On this drive—and all the others—Batt expounded on stories from the history and economy of each county and village. We learned a great deal about the southern half of Ireland on this trip. We learned, for example, that about 30 years ago a politician ran on a “no property tax” platform. He won and gradually property tax was eliminated in Ireland—although it is beginning to slowly come back into practice. Our guide says that decrease in government funding helped to fuel the crash of the Irish economy after the “Celtic Tiger” that took place from the early 1990’s up to 2006—an era that would compare to the “irrational exuberance” in the U.S. prior to 2008.
Whoa! This is getting far too serious for a vacation blog. Time for some photos. These seem to indicate that not everyone on the bus was not equally attentive to our guide’s history lessons.
These sleepers woke up just in time to learn that about 2/3rds in Ireland have National Health Insurance and the other third are insured by their employers. Batt says health care is not nearly as expensive here as in the U.S. He spends a good deal of time in the U.S. each year, teaching or performing at colleges and Irish cultural events.
Even so, Batt Burns is a fine seanachie. Very fine. On our first evening in Galway he gave us a private performance—one very like those he has staged in 35 states in America, including multiple times at the huge Irish festival in Dublin, OH. His Frank O’Conner story may have been the best, but the poems by Y.B. Yates were moving as were his stories about about the priests and bachelors in Sneem.
We’ll close this blog with this from Oscar Wilde, whom we met in a small park in Dublin.
“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself.”
What do you note about this shot? That it is the Irish Stew we had on the road between Dublin and Galway? That it includes the brown bread we enjoyed every evening? That we ate a lot of cooked carrots in Ireland? That the photo is upside down?
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