Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This 300-mile-long, saucer-shaped island, ringed with some of Europe's most scenic
coastal cliffs, is only 150 miles across at its widest point—no matter where you go in Ire-
land, you're never more than 75 miles from the sea. Despite being as far north as New-
foundland, Ireland has a mild maritime climate, thanks to the Gulf Stream. Snowfall is rare
and temporary here. Rainfall, on the other hand, ranges from more than 100 inches a year
in soggy, boggy Connemara to about 30 inches a year in Dublin. Any time of year, bring
rain gear. As Ireland's own Oscar Wilde once quipped, “There is no bad weather...only in-
appropriate clothing.”
Republic of Ireland
Forget everything you learned from ads for Lucky Charms cereal or Irish Spring soap, and
immerse yourself in authentic Ireland.
Passionate, poetic, and pugnacious...the Irish have confounded others throughout time.
Queen Elizabeth I, as tough a British monarch as has ever graced the throne, once fam-
ously hissed in frustration that the Irish “were all Blarney” as she negotiated with the
highly evasive Irish lord of Blarney Castle. An exasperated Sigmund Freud said, “The
Irish are the only race whose insanities cannot be cured by psychoanalysis.” And the Irish
inspired the English poet G. K. Chesterton to write:
The great Gaels of Ireland
