The first time the Atlantic wind slapped my face raw, I was standing on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher, coat flapping like a surrender flag, wondering why I’d ever left the safety of a desk job in my city. It was June, but the Irish summer had decided to play coy—sun one minute, sideways rain the next. Below me, the ocean gnawed at the cliffs with the patience of something ancient and hungry. A puffin wheeled overhead, unimpressed by my existential crisis.
I’d come with a backpack, a rental car the size of a toaster, and a vague plan to “find myself,” which is code for running away from a breakup and a promotion I didn’t want. Ireland, I figured, had enough myths to swallow one more lost soul.
Dublin greeted me with the smell of peat smoke and fried things. I checked into a hostel in Temple Bar where the bunk above mine was occupied by a snoring Australian who’d tattooed the Southern Cross on his calf “for the memories.” That night, I wandered into a pub called The Cobblestone, ordered a pint of Guinness that tasted like liquid bread, and listened to a fiddler saw through a reel so fast his bow smoked. An old man with a face like a crumpled map leaned over.
“You’re American,” he said. Not a question.
“Guilty.”
He nodded, as if that explained everything. “First time in Ireland?”
“Yeah.”
He raised his glass. “Then you’re already behind. Sláinte.”
I drank. The room tilted pleasantly.
Day 3: The Wicklow Gap and the Ghost of a Wolfhound
South of Dublin, the mountains rise like the spine of some sleeping giant. I drove the Military Road through the Wicklow Gap, windows down, radio spitting static and snippets of trad music. At Glendalough, I hiked to the upper lake where the ruins of a 6th-century monastery sit reflected in black water. A tour guide told me St. Kevin once lived here as a hermit, praying so hard birds nested in his outstretched hands. I tried it. A crow landed, shat on my wrist, and flew off. Close enough.
That night, camping wild near the Sally Gap, I woke to the sound of something large moving through the heather. I froze, heart hammering. A shape—tall, pale, four-legged—paused at the edge of the firelight. A wolfhound? Impossible; they’re extinct in the wild. But the eyes glowed amber, and when it turned, the moonlight caught a collar of rusted iron. Then it was gone. I didn’t sleep again.
Day 7: Galway, Where the Rain Has a PhD in Drama
Galway city is a fistfight between color and weather. I busked badly on Shop Street—attempted “Danny Boy” on a borrowed tin whistle—and made three euros and a marriage proposal from a hen party in Sligo. At the Crane Bar, I met Aoife, a marine biologist with a laugh like a cracked bell. She bought me a whiskey and told me about the currach races off Inishmore, how the Aran Islands still speak Irish like it’s 1952.
“You should go,” she said. “Before the tourists ruin it.”
I went.
Day 9: Inishmore and the Wormhole of Common Sense
The ferry to Inishmore bucked like a drunk mule. On the island, I rented a bike with one gear and the structural integrity of a soggy biscuit. I cycled to Dún Aonghasa, a fort perched on a 300-foot cliff, stones arranged in semicircles like the ribs of a giant. The wind up there could peel paint. I lay on my stomach and peered over the edge. The sea boiled white. A French tourist screamed. I laughed until I cried, or maybe the wind did it for me.
Later, a local farmer named Pádraig showed me Poll na bPéist—the Serpent’s Lair—a rectangular hole in the cliff where the ocean funnels in and out with a sound like a dying god. “Red Bull divers jump it,” he said. “Mad bastards.” I asked if anyone local ever tried. He spat. “We’ve sense.”
Day 12: Connemara, Where the Sky Learns Gaelic
West of Galway, Connemara is a place God sketched in pencil and forgot to color. I drove the Sky Road at dusk, the Atlantic on one side, mountains on the other, both lit the color of bruised peaches. In a pub in Clifden, I ate lamb stew so good I considered proposing to the cook. A man with a concertina played “The Parting Glass.” Half the room sang. I didn’t know the words, but I hummed the shape of them.
That night, I slept in the car beside Kylemore Abbey. The moon rose full and obscene over the lake. I dreamed of the wolfhound again, but this time it spoke with my ex’s voice: “You can’t outrun geography.”
Day 15: The Ring of Kerry and the Donkey Who Knew My Name
The Ring of Kerry is a 111-mile loop of postcard abuse. I stopped at Ladies’ View, where Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting allegedly swooned. I swooned too, but mostly from low blood sugar. In Killarney, I hiked Torc Waterfall and met a donkey named Seamus who followed me for a mile, braying every time I tried to take a photo. I gave him an apple. He ate it, stared at me with liquid eyes, and said—clear as day—“Feck off, Yank.” I swear on my passport.
Day 18: Dingle and the Fungie Hoax
Dingle town is a crayon box spilled across a peninsula. I ate fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, watched surfers wipe out in Brandon Bay, and learned that Fungie, the famous dolphin, had vanished years ago. “Tourist board keeps the statue,” the chip shop guy shrugged. “People need something to believe in.” That night, I swam in the dark harbor anyway. Something brushed my leg—seal, dolphin, my imagination. I didn’t care.
Day 21: Skellig Michael and the Monk Who Wasn’t
The boat to Skellig Michael left at dawn, slicing through swells that made my stomach file for divorce. The island rises from the sea like a broken tooth. 618 steps later, lungs on fire, I stood among beehive huts where monks once copied manuscripts and fought off Vikings with prayers and bad attitudes. A puffin nested in St. Michael’s skull, according to legend. I found only guano.
On the way down, the guide pointed to Little Skellig, white with gannets. “Fifty thousand birds,” he said. “World’s second-largest colony.” The noise was biblical.
Day 24: Cork, Rebel City, and the Butter Museum
Cork city smells of river and rebellion. I kissed the Blarney Stone—hanging upside down while a man with a death grip on my belt shouted “Mind the gap!”—and gained the gift of gab, or possibly vertigo. At the English Market, I ate drisheen and white pudding and pretended to like it. In the Butter Museum, I learned Ireland once exported 80 million pounds of butter a year, packed in firkins. I bought a souvenir firkin. It’s a coaster now.
Day 27: The Antrim Coast and the Giant’s Causeway
Northern Ireland sneaked up on me like a plot twist. The Causeway Coastal Route is a dragon’s spine of cliffs and castles. At the Giant’s Causeway, I walked the basalt columns—hexagons stacked like nature’s Lego—and listened to the guide tell the story of Finn McCool, the giant who built the causeway to fight a Scottish rival, then disguised himself as a baby to scare him off. “Typical Irish solution,” she said. “Talk big, then cheat.”
I crossed the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge in a gale. Thirty meters above the sea, it swayed like a drunk tightrope walker. I did not look down. I lied.
Day 30: Belfast and the Echo of Shipyards
Belfast is a city that remembers too much. I walked the Peace Wall, still dividing Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, covered in murals and hope in spray paint. At the Titanic Museum, I stood in a replica of the third-class staircase and felt the weight of 1,500 ghosts. That night, in the Crown Liquor Saloon, I drank with a former shipyard worker who’d riveted the Titanic’s sister ship. “We built the world,” he said, “then watched it sink.”
Day 33: The Return
I flew out of Dublin at sunrise, the Liffey glinting like a coin dropped by the gods. In my pocket: a pebble from the Giant’s Causeway, a puffin feather, and Seamus the donkey’s tooth (he bit me; fair trade). The wolfhound never reappeared, but sometimes, in the hum of jet engines, I hear its paws on heather.
Ireland didn’t give me answers. It gave me better questions. And a permanent craving for soda bread.
If you go, bring waterproof everything. And a spare heart. The first one will get stolen by a fiddler, a farmer, or a donkey who knows your name.