Back from Ireland: Tip o' the neill to ya!

It's midnight Dublin time but we're back enjoying the cicadas of Chicago at 6pm.  Too many photos to show yet but a few impressions from the trip:

1.  Tons of tourists, largely French, German, and Italian.  Irish super-friendly.
2.  Hardly any Americans in Northern Ireland.
3.  Derry/Londonderry is an important place for anyone to visit who wants to understand Irish politics.
4.  The roads are as tiny as they say, but at least they are paved.  Sean did a heroic job driving.
5.  Best dairy products in the universe - butter, milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream.
6.  Sausages available as part of every full Irish breakfast, but where are the pigs?  We saw at least 50,000 sheep, about a dozen donkeys, but literally only two pigs.
7.  "Champ" = mashed potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, chives or green onions.  Too good for words.
8.  Slieve League: highest sea cliffs in Europe (1,291 feet).  Photos when I can dig them out.  Unbelievable.
9.  Also tons of medieval and megalithic sites.
10.  Much amusing signage and graffiti.  Again, hope to find all the photos we took of it.
11.  Surprising geographic diversity for such a small country.  Also an astonishing amount of water.  Also astonishing beauty around nearly every bend.
12.  Wheaten bread (extra-coarse whole-wheat/oat Irish soda bread) and Club Lemon became our car sustenance as we usually skipped lunch.  Wheaten bread produces a very specific and evil type of fart which cannot be replicated with any other food, sort of  like the smell of gym shoes gone wrong.  Very bad indeed.  But the bread is so tasty you just get up the next day and eat it again at breakfast.  The crazy thing is you can get this amazing rustic bread anywhere, even at their crappy little convenience stores.
13.  Tea.  Tea with milk and sugar, and wheaten bread with divine Irish butter.  The things they do well, the Irish do really, really well.  The Irish seem to like their tea incredibly strong, almost as dark as coffee, so 1-2 cups in the morning is plenty.

That's all for now....just to stay up a few more hours till bedtime (yawn).....