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Like everyone else said, in Ireland it's almost always raining, about to rain, or has just stopped raining. However, most of the time the rain is quite light - downpours are rare, it's more likely to be an irritating sort of mist/drizzle that you'll spend minutes at a time deciding whether or not is heavy enough to justify opening an umbrella or putting up your hood. Severe cold is also extremely unlikely - temps will probably be well above freezing, but the damp makes things feel pretty chilly most of the time. Tipping is not as completely embedded as it is in the US, but no-one is ever going to be offended if you leave a tip, and leaving a restaurant without tipping would be pretty unusual. We don't generally tip barstaff at all. Friendliness is very likely, but it is fairly superficial - people will absolutely stop for a chat but they won't actually share much about themselves while doing so. American offensiveness? nah, barring obvious stuff like loudly voicing potentially controversial political views like on Northern Ireland or being a very vocal Trump fan, you're very unlikely to run into any arguments. Oh yeah, try to avoid saying places like castles and cities are 'really cute' (though that just might be my problem; to me it sounds weirdly patronising )
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Jan 21, 2020 15:56
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Professor of Cats posted:Thank you very much! You all helped me feel a lot more confident about my upcoming trip. I'd say you'll have a great time  Apart from the big 'destination' type castles and things, there are a good few Norman towerhouse-type castles just standing in fields by the sides of roads throughout the south/southeast. I remember noticing a load of them the last time we drove across that part of the country. Also Wexford is a really nice town, all the streets follow the original medieval layout so its got a nice, old-fashioned feel. If you like trains, the trip from Wexford to Dublin or even to Bray is really nice - probably the best train views in the country. It's a 2-3 hours trip one way, depending on how far you go.
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Jan 22, 2020 17:02
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Just the journey from Dublin to the Giant's causeway is a 6 hour round trip - it's really really not a day trip. Like the others have said, if you want to look at nature and womble around towns in a relaxed way you're probably going to have to cut out at least one whole country, and whichever countries you do settle on, don't plan on zipping from one end to the other. You'll just end up exhausted and not able to enjoy the places once you get there.
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Jan 26, 2020 12:40
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WaryWarren posted:This article is depressing as gently caress. Speaking as a European worried about US tourists wandering around spreading covid, I welcome anything which encourages people to stay the hell away. We've got business people already reporting turning US tourists away after they admitted not adhering to the 2 week quarantine they are supposed to be observing. Everyone wants things to get back to normal, but these people are just making that process take longer 
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Jul 16, 2020 17:53
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Julio Cruz posted:I can hardly express how loving insane it is that the UK of all places seems to doing relatively well with vaccinations and actually getting the infection rate down to somewhere where opening back up seems like a reasonable decision The UK A). pulled a fast one with the Astra Zeneca shot and so swiped a load of doses that should have gone to the EU and B.) Gambled that having a 12 week gap between doses instead of the tested-for 4 week gap would not cause the vaccine to be much less effective. They got really, really lucky with B. Pookah fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 17:03
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kiimo posted:I have a co-worker that lives just outside of Bologna and he said he was so confined to his area he couldn't even go downtown to the city he lives in. How common is this? It seems wild to me as an American full of dumbass freedom people Ireland has fairly recently come out of the heaviest restrictions - only allowed travel 5km from your home (unless required by work), work from home wherever possible, all non-essential retail closed, all pubs and bars closed, no indoor dining, no gyms, cinemas etc. Things are slowly opening back up, but cautiously since our healthcare system is a bit shite and could easily become overwhelmed like it did just after Christmas when our case numbers absolutely exploded. Vaccination roll-out is trundling along; we're probably going to start on otherwise healthy 40-45 year olds this week. People are bored and tired of it, but the majority are still willing to stick to the guidelines since it looks like there really might be light at the end of the tunnel. Something like 80% of the population intend to get vaccinated  I think it helps that most people here do trust that the government/health authorities are not actively trying to do harm. Yeah they bungle stuff and yeah there's the usual shady cronyism you see in most governments, but there's very little support for anti-lockdown/5G/Big Pharma & Bill Gates are installing microchips conspiracy stuff
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May 24, 2021 15:40
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Re: campsite chat - I've never noticed Dutch people being particularly noisy, it's been a fairly even spread of nationalities. I'd notice english noisemakers more but that's probably because I can understand everything they are saying so it's harder to tune out. The oddest thing I ever saw in a campsite was when this teeny tiny little camper pulled into the next bay, and the first thing the occupants did after arriving was put out a little portable picket fence all around their area. They didn't put out chairs and table within the space, which would have made some kind of sense, in fact, I don't think I ever saw them sit out at all. At night they drew the curtains and played popular hits of the 1950s, performed entirely on the hammond organ. It was quite surreal.
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May 27, 2021 16:35
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Just an FYI if anyone is wondering why data for Ireland is unavailable, it's because the health service system got hacked and ransom-wared, in early May and they are still working on getting things back to normal. Fortunately the vaccine rollout was running on an entirely separate system so it wasn't affected. Data about the current state of covid in Ireland is available here: https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/covid-1914-dayepidemiologyreports/
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Jun 26, 2021 11:04
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Ras Het posted:I think literally every European has been there. Unfortunately I was two years old when I was there so no tips This checks out, I was 5. All I remember about it was that the sweets were really nasty.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:38
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Just a general note that the cost of renting a car pretty much anywhere in Europe has increased a hell of a lot in the last couple of years. My brother came back from the US to Ireland last month, and they were planning to rent a car, but it was just impossibly expensive
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Apr 29, 2022 11:57
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Carbon dioxide posted:What kind of prices are we talking about? Just did a quick Google, and this what I got for a tiny car for 7 days - at least 700 euros https://www.budget.ie/booking/#/vehicleSelection/ I knew Ireland was crazy pricy, but it seems prices increased pretty much everywhere in Europe by over 100%. Having said that, if the base price was, like 5 quid a day, a 100% increase isn't THAT bad.
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Apr 29, 2022 13:03
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Clyde Radcliffe posted:I didn't believe that price but checked myself and you're right. Oh I'm not looking to rent a car in Ireland, I live here I just wanted to warn people coming here to absolutely not assume a car rental will cost anything like what they might expect from previous visits.Your advice is very good though - tourists to Ireland- rent up north, it's way cheaper!
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May 5, 2022 18:05
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Check what accommodation is available in Dublin around the time you're thinking of visiting - it will probably be in v. short supply and eye-wateringly expensive
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Jun 3, 2022 10:35
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I don't want to be a massive downer, I know people in the US usually get lovely holidays and it's a long way to travel over to Europe and a big expense, but...5 days of a 17 day trip spent in airports and on planes is an awfully big proportion. From my own experience, the day after a day spent in airports/planes I'm still pretty drained, so if you are anything at all like me, you're going to spend the majority of the trip feeling really tired. It's not the most exciting advice, but the best trips I've spent anywhere have included a few days of just mooching around, enjoying the feel of the place without any pressure to be doing something touristy. I spent a week in Rome, and at least half of that was just spent walking around looking at the neighbourhoods within 5-10 miles of the hotel. If you can strip a couple of destinations out of your itinerary, you'll almost certainly enjoy the ones you have left a lot more. Leave some time to just be in places, without trying to 'do' them as efficiently as possible.
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Jul 12, 2022 23:12
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It hasn't gotten super hot here in Ireland yet, but its expected to hit high 20s, possibly over 30 in the next 4 days. We're (immediate family) alright when at home, since we live right on the east coast, so sea breezes will probably bring temperatures right down, but we've been planning how to take our extremely hairy dog for walks without him dying of heatstroke. Once you get more that a street or two away from the sea it gets really loving stuffy. Wetting him down with big bottles of water usually does the trick. It's a pain in the rear end at night, Irish people are not acclimatised to nighttime temperatures over like, 14 degrees celcius, so we're all absolutely boiled when it's 18-20 degrees at night. I've been sleeping with wet hair and no bedclothes for the last week because it's too drat hot otherwise.
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Jul 15, 2022 22:32
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kuddles posted:So, our Italy trip in September (starting in Rome and ending in Venice) originally included a day trip from Rome to Pompeii. For various reasons we decided to stick to the North and skip the Amalfi coast entirely early on in our planning, but I later learned that Pompeii was on my partner's bucket list so we decided to shoehorn it in. I can't answer your actual question, but just in case you dont already know about it, there is an absolutely amazing abandoned roman city just a short train ride from Rome itself. Ostia Antica is huge, beautiful and normally not very crowded. If I remember correctly the nearest metro stop is Pyramide, then the train itself takes about half an hour. I've probably said it many times already in this thread but the day spent in Ostia was 100% my favorite day of the holiday. You can walk for miles around the remains of the city, and majority are at least 50% intact buildings.
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Aug 4, 2022 18:31
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Watching people driving around Rome was just amazing. We were staying fairly close to the Vatican, so the streets were all really narrow and mostly one-way. Stopping mid-street to hop out and go shopping for bread, or just to chat to a friend, was commonplace. Abandoning your tiny, old-school fiat 500 on a pedestrian crossing, or in an alleyway, or on someone's doorstep, was commonplace. Staying up all night to have extremely loud conversations at 3 am while revving your vespa was apparently required behaviour.
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Nov 11, 2022 20:43
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greazeball posted:Americans are the only nationality that thinks people want to be approached by them. People don't want to be approached, anywhere, ever. Possible exception for the covid sceptics who've been abandoned by everyone they know for never shutting up about 5G vaccine sterilizations and so they just stand on street corners shouting and hoping someone will engage them. Objection: Ireland In Ireland you can get into random street chats about nearly anything, as long as it's not nasty or mean. If you want mean racist chat, talk to 50% of taxi drivers. I have a dog, and I chat with strangers every single day about how cute and smart our dogs are. A few weeks ago, a mildly drunk man came up to me while I was waiting outside a supermarket to tell me musk ox weren't actually oxen, they are more closely related to goats. This was a thing I kind of already knew, so I had a nice little chat with mildly drunk guy about the evolution of the musk ox.
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Jan 31, 2023 20:51
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greazeball posted:OK that's fair, I lived in Dublin for a few years and it does ring true now that you mention it. But the Irish approach is different from the Americans. Irish folks generally have something to tell you to start the conversation, Americans more often than not start with a question, which can range from really personal to insanely dumb, and then the onus is on the other person to make the conversation. White Lotus captured it perfectly, the way people would just ask questions to people at the next table. Yeah, I get you on the distinction between sharing a thought compared to asking for an answer. Asking strangers personal or potentially controversial questions is just asking for trouble. I loved that clothing thread. It's like, you can wear whatever you want but you'd better be prepared for commentary if it is any way out of the ordinary. You'll get a lot of respect if you can punch back about your unorthodox clothing choices.
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Jan 31, 2023 21:22
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Chieves posted:Hello everyone, I feel like I've become a bit of a cliche in recommending Ostia Antica. It was the best part of my 10 day visit to Rome, just wandering around an abandoned Roman city looking at the old houses, theatres, pubs and restaurants. Please do visit the museum up on the Capitolinum. It has the most amazing collection of largely contemporary portrait busts of late Republic and early Empire leaders. Roman sculptural portraiture is/was very unusual, in that it was mostly extremely true to life. If you had a warty nose, it was recorded, even if you were the emperor. The exception is Commodus, who is portrayed as extremely handsome, with the classic attributes of Hercules, but Commodus was nuts, so the artist was presumably afraid of being more accurate. There is an absolutely glorious early-republic bronze bust of, I think, a consul, and it is unbelievably perfectly rendered.
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Mar 2, 2023 21:21
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Greg12 posted:Sleeping on a boat, though... that's where I spend all night half-awake for fear of sleeping through the abandon ship alarm! I am a very cautious sleeper, and can barely ever manage to sleep anywhere even vaguely unfamiliar, but I grew up in a family where our holidays were mostly spent on fairly small sailing boats, so as a child, I got very accustomed to sleeping over deep water. One time, one of my aunts asked how I could relax knowing that I was about 2 inches of fibreglass away from boundless depths, and I was just flummoxed. The boat is safe and comfy! The waves rock you gently to sleep, and when you nod off, you'll probably wake up somewhere interesting
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Mar 21, 2023 20:24
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Indolent Bastard posted:Why does Dublin have a dozen bus services? Getting anywhere in town is nuts. So many suggested routes use multiple services to get you where you want to go. It is frustrating. It was never great, but then Dublin Bus sold off a pile of the less busy routes to Go Ahead, a company with long-established form for providing extremely lovely service. So not only are these routes poorly serviced, checking bus timetables is a lot more annoying than it was when Dublin Bus ran them all. Plus there are private companies running services in various local areas.
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May 21, 2023 17:25
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I visited the Isle of Man a several times when I was a kid (so, many years ago), and I always really liked it. Traveling around on the dinky little steam trains, and the electric trams was fun, and there are a good few places to visit, like the Laxey Wheel, and the top of Snaefell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxey_Wheel Near the harbour in Douglas, there is a Camera Obscura, not a destination in itself, but a fun thing to visit if you're going for a walk out that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Union_Camera_Obscura Castle Rushen is pretty interesting too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rushen Peel Castle is worth a look too, though it is mostly ruins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Castle edit: just look at how little the trains are, and they all have names   edit: just to add a little extra nostalgia, we used to sail there in a small boat, over from Howth in Ireland. It was a 16 hour voyage, and part of the time, we were out of sight of land, so arriving in Douglas felt like we'd basically crossed an ocean to get there
Pookah fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 13:04
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Wear very very comfy shoes for the Vatican tour; it's not that it's gruelling, more that there is just So Much to look at and try to absorb that even the slightest added discomfort should be avoided. I remember walking down a long, panelled corridor between wings, and saw the most glorious carved wooden figures built into the walls. They weren't even mentioned, they were just considered background noise. Stuff that would be front and centre in another museum is just "bleh" in the Vatican.
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Sep 4, 2023 18:55
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Judgy Fucker posted:For anyone else reading this thread looking for Europe travel advice: please don’t jump in front of speeding taxis just to prove a point. I dunno, it can be part of a fun night out? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Ka4uNa9vY
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Sep 22, 2023 14:44
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If you are shy about being seen vaguely pooping, you can just turn off the light?
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Dec 6, 2023 20:54
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