Hello (and goodbye), Ireland!

Just sitting in Dublin airport, waiting for my trip back to London...

I've been here, visiting Kildare Village, for the past few days doing a photo shoot for the June issue of the online magazine I'm editing.

It's been wet and windy (note: "windy" in the UK can also refer to being gassy... obviously, in this context, I mean windy as in the wind blowing through the trees and messing up my hair) and I have made a few observations about the Irish:

1) They are very proud - of their land, of their country, of everything. 

The customs official asked, upon entering the country, if I'd be back often, to which I replied, 'probably not'. This sounds snooty but it was barely 8am (meaning I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am to catch my 7am flight!) and in my tired state, I was simply being honest.

Anyway, his response to this was "you just try" with a cheeky little twinkle in his eye. This made me smile.

2) Not surprisingly, many of them are anti-English. One man told me that Ireland had been "occupied by terrorists" for many years. Someone who heard him thought he meant the English; someone else thought he meant the IRA. I don't know which he meant, but I do know I need to learn brush up on my Irish history.

Here's another example of how the Irish like to do things their own way:

This tea tasted very similar to the English variety of the (almost) same name.

3) Apparently, red hair is not an accurate Irish stereotype. I made a comment about seeing lots of people with red hair (what?! I did!), and a friend told me that a more common, "actual" Irish look is dark hair and pale skin. What I was referring to was Scottish. Right.

4) Many (or at least it appears as such) English people have never tried Guinness. Weird, right?! In my first year at Queen's University, I'm pretty sure I thought it would make me cool if I liked Guinness - so for a (very short) while, before I moved on to vodka redbulls or tequila shots (barf), I drank Guinness when we went to bars and pubs.

Guinness heir Daphne Guinness, who, judging from her super-skinny physique, probably does not drink Guinness beer. (Photo: Mayhem Entertainment)

OK, off to find some grub before I fly!