Ireland, a Review

11 Jun, 2025

2 days ago, I got back from my trip from Ireland (BTW: By Ireland, I mean the Southern non-UK part of Ireland). While there, I was with my school music program and we did a little music tour thing. I only ended up playing one show (in which coins were thrown at our conductor) (obviously the best one), and overall although there were definitely problems and friction in this trip, the experience was fruitful and awesome.

With that being said, I won't do a full-on review and review every hour of my trip or something since that's tiring and boring. Rather, I'll just focus on a few key points and key differences between Ireland and the US and some other thoughts. I've also never been to any other European country so maybe some of this is standard Europe stuff.

Also, I'll try to skip the standard tourism stuff.

The Good

Ireland is green. Hella green. I suspect this has something to do with the geography and climate of Ireland as well as social factors. On the climate/geography side of things, Ireland is quite cool most of the time, and rain is super common -- both in rainy days as well as brief showers (~5-15 min). On the social side of things, besides the big tourism industry that would want a lot of greenery and the reverence the irish have towards their "green countryside" (maybe -- I'm going out on a limb here), there just aren't that many people living in Ireland. As such, plants are free to roam given their two crucial resources -- land and water/sunlight/co2.
Or maybe my group just traveled through rural places a lot.
Ireland loves roundabouts. And now I do too. Instead of having some massive four ramp clover intersection that looks slightly unsightly and takes up lots of resources, when two Irish highways/roads meet, there's just a roundabout and people take turns going around. It feels nice and oddly relaxing (with lots of signs pointing you towards where you should be going), and with not that many cars at any one roundabout at a given time, in my opinion, it's amazing. We should bring more roundabouts back.
Building off of this point, besides driving on the "wrong" side of the road, Ireland doesn't seem to prioritize roads. The widest road I saw in Ireland was a 3-lane highway both ways (6 lanes in total), which is not quite wide considering the freeway in my backyard (if a city counts as a backyard) has like 4/5 lanes both ways all the time.
Moreover, roads in Ireland aren't bunched up. And even when they are, it's hard to notice given how tall the buildings are. What I mean by this is that along almost every road I traveled (besides the ones in big cities), there would more or less just be tall grass along both sides of the road. There would rarely be another road going in the same direction as the road I was currently on, and overall, the roads in Ireland give me the impression that they're just there to go from one place to another, and nothing more. There's no need to be fancy if a simple roundabout can get it done. There's no need to pave out roads super nice with asphalt and cut down the land around it if just a simple 2-laner works. Irish roads simply lead you from one place to another.
This is something small but super appreciable in Ireland -- sales tax is hidden! If something off the shelf costs 9.95 euros, that's all you need to give them! There's no need to calculate the sales tax and estimate your purchase; when buying something in Ireland, you know exactly how much it's going to cost. This saved me a lot of brain power and is just a super nice feature in general.
I say hidden because the sales tax most definitely exists -- it's just calculated into the cost. For example, if something is priced as 9.95 euros, that doesn't mean it costs 9.95; it means it probably costs something like 8.75 and tax is 1.20 euros. But the item isn't priced at 8.75 -- it's priced as 9.95. That's what I mean by tax is 'hidden'.
Ireland, Dublin specifically, seems to have a thriving graffiti/underground scene. I like that.
Ireland is super walkable. To the point where if there are no cars, people will just cross the street. Jaywalking is everywhere, and I almost got hit by a car doing it (skill issue?). But yeah the walkability and bikeability of the city is off the charts.
Bread is cheap :). I got a massive loaf in a market for 3 euros.
Cities are clean, poverty is low (apparently from the looks of it), and there's not much trash just blowing in the wind all day. With that being said however.... (see point #4 in the The Bad/Weird section)
Ireland builds upwards. I don't think I ever saw a 'suburb' in Ireland for this reason -- in the US, suburbs are defined by their apartment buildings and single-person houses and grid structures and all that -- in Ireland, there are no single-family houses that are short and sit near a town; everything is big buildings (or at least tall buildings) all the way up. I think the US could learn from this to solve its housing issue -- build apartments and build high to house more people per piece of land. But yeah, tall buildings are all around, and Irish architects utilize space well I guess.

The Bad/Weird

Irish water tastes weird. Maybe it's just more disinfected but for me it definitely tasted weird. Also there are very few places to fill your water bottle in public. I wandered into a coffee shop and they were willing to just fill my water bottle up for free (kinda goated), but I'm pretty sure that doesn't always happen. Make sure to pack water I guess.
Things in Ireland open at weird times. It's like in Alaska where the hours seem to literally be whatever the shop owners want them to be. I think I'm probably slightly exaggerating this but from what I've seen, a lot of things (restaurants, libraries) don't open until 10am, which is cool but also makes me wonder, do Irish people just sleep in a lot? Anyways yeah, if you're traveling, be mindful of shop hours -- things aren't always open.
Despite there being a tax basically on plastic bottles encouraging citizens to recycle their bottles/cans for money back, I couldn't find many of these places. This isn't necessarily bad or weird, I just thought it was slightly disappointing. I ended up holding on to a Sprite that I got on my 2nd day for ~4 days before finally admitting defeat and throwing it in a regular can because I couldn't find the place to get some euros back.
Also, (this isn't bad/weird -- it's interesting but it has to do with bottles so I'll keep all the bottles thoughts in one place) a plastic bottle in Ireland can be recycled for ~15c. One in the US can be recycled for about ~5c. The difference is staggering considering the price -- the 15c deposit for a bottle that costs no more than 3 euros makes the deposit on the plastic 5% of the price of the drink.
There's a lot of smoking and vaping in Ireland. There's like 2 vape shops per block, and it seems like a lot of people in their 20s/30s do it casually. I saw someone doing it on the job too -- just casually vaping in between helping customers.
Along with smoking/vaping a lot, people in Ireland drink pretty loosely. This isn't bad perse and might just be part of the culture, but I saw people getting drinks at like 11am.

The Interesting

Building off of my first "The Good" point, it seems like a lot of Ireland is just open, with very little developed infrastructure. Contrast this to the US where almost every inch of usable land is probably taken up and owned, and much of what is left is just 'the wilderness' or something.
Despite there being a lot of green in Ireland, there's very few trees out in the wilderness -- a lot of grass and shrubs, but not many trees. Interesting stuff.
While in the US highways are usually arranged as a sort of grid -- either going N/S or E/W, some Irish highways go kind of diagonally on the map. Just thought that was interesting.
I bought a piece of bread for 66 cents at a market. I got 34 cents in change and two 2c coins, despite 2c coins being out of circulation in Ireland. That was cool.
A lot of my diet consisted of potatoes. And potatoes are really filling. But yeah, potatoes are found in almost all parts of Irish food.
There is a "Barack Obama Plaza" in Ireland. Like a whole junction/rest stop sorta thing named after Obama.
Ireland seems to be very pro-Ukraine and pro-Palestine.
Every Papa John's that I saw in Ireland was next to a chain called "Superbets" which is like the Irish version of McDonalds. Just thought that was interesting -- it's like how Matt Lakeman noticed that in Lagos, every Dominos had like a Cold Stone attached to it or something. Just kinda interesting.
Baked goods in Ireland were left out in the open sometimes -- in the same way that apples aren't usually prepackaged, donuts and bread were sometimes just in baskets rather than bags already.