Archives de la catégorie : Everyday Life

When you come to Ireland, you think you’ll find an English copycat. But the visitor is faced with a kind of permanent cognitive dissonance that can’t be found anywhere else in Europe. Indeed, the country is both very accessible: small towns, small houses, full streets with pubs and shops open 7 days a week, allLire la suite « Magic Ireland 3/3: magic in the air »

Trinity College is a unique place in the world, both an excellent university and a major tourist attraction, probably the most visited place in Ireland. People will tell you it’s the Guinness storehouse, but in fact absolutely all the tourists come to see the magnificent campus, which is free to enter, and take photos inLire la suite « Trinity College »

For those who know how to look, Ireland offers to visitors the chance to see overlapping layers of prehistory, history and scenic views. From Dublin, I head for the northern tip of the island, Malin Head, with my eldest daughter, who is a Londoner at heart. The biggest, smallest, most/ less populated, etc…superlatives have alwaysLire la suite « A week-end in the North »

The name we give to things always matters. Naming the vessel TITANIC, (or the TITAN for her infamous observer), was she then doomed to a tragic end? The Titans were the very first gods of the Greek mythology, but defeated in the second generation by the gods of Olympus. Well, Greek tragedies always end badly.Lire la suite « The Titanic, a Greek tragedy »

For those who know both the lyrics of Sardou’s song and Ireland, which is the case for 99% of French people for the former, and a small minority of which I am a part for the latter, we have understood that « Les lacs du Connemara » is not a right-wing song, nor a left-wing song forLire la suite « A week-end in Connemara »

Ireland is truly not known for being a particularly egalitarian country. Abortion has only been allowed since 2018, homosexuality has been decriminalized since 1993, divorce has been legalized in 1995 (!) . Until 1973, a married woman was not allowed to work for the civil service, she had to resign when she married. It isLire la suite « SPECIAL IRISH WOMEN »

NI = Northern Ireland Mid-October 2023, it’s 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement. How does it stand ? In order to see the situation more clearly, I go to Belfast and book the group « political walking tour » in West Belfast: I am told that it will be a 3-hour walking tour, 4 kilometers in totalLire la suite « Belfast in 2023 »

IRA = Irish Republican Army, an armed and underground organization created in 1919, whose aim is to liberate the entire island of Ireland from British occupation by violence RUC = Royal Ulster Constabulary, a Northern Irish state police force, created in 1922 and made up mainly of English and/or Protestant members. UVF = Ulster VolunteerLire la suite « the Troubles »

You don’t have to spend a lot of time in Ireland to see that churches are never far away, there is always one somewhere, whether it’s beautiful and full of people like in Dublin, or half in ruins all over the countryside. It is important to understand that, the history of the Irish Catholic ChurchLire la suite « The best catholics in the world? (*) »