Ireland. It’s a small island on the western fringe of Europe. It has mountains, myths and madness. It contains some of the most beautiful and gentle people you will ever meet, and (sadly) some of the worst. But regardless of the citizens, who for the most part will give you a ceád míle fáilte (hundred thousand welcomes), it is the landscape that will charm.

Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle for a very good reason. It is green. It is so green that it’s also known as the land of Forty Shades of Green. And it is. First time visitors to this nation are regularly astounded by how fertile it all is. Even the people are fertile with Ireland having the highest birth-rate in Europe. Is it the whiskey? The tea? The bacon and cabbage? It’s probably not the bacon and cabbage as few people really eat that stuff outside of Hollywood’s depictions of Oirish.

So, if you’ve never been to Ireland yet wonder what it’s all about, or if you have visited and wish to remind yourself of the time you spent there (trying desperately to forget the mugging on O’Connell Street and the drunken Irishman who threw up over you in the Temple Bar), then sit back, relax, and take a trip across the land of a thousand myths, countless heroes and a few great rock bands (U2 not included in that description).

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