Expectations

Many years ago I was a different dude.  I was married and full of the sort of silly optimism that people possess until they figure out that most of the world is basically full of shit.  My wife had a birthday approaching, so we decided to spend a long weekend in Chicago.  Each of us had been there a few times but we had never gone together.  In case you're unfamiliar with the Chicago scene - it involves a little walking around and a lot of shopping.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but hey, it was her birthday.  Plus there are lots of bars where you can spend $6 each for shitty bottles of Sam Adams until 4am, so that has to count for something.

Before we left, I decided to pull a switcheroo.  I bought plane tickets to New York and booked a hotel room for three nights.  Instead of driving for a few hours to Chicago, we drove the twenty minutes to the airport and hopped on an airplane.  My primary expectation at the time was to surprise my wife.  Mission accomplished.  She never saw it coming.  My secondary expectation was to see a new city for a few days.  I thought it would be like Chicago but a little bigger.

That expectation was wrong.  New York was not only bigger than Chicago, but also better in every way.  And the word 'better' is an understatement.  After spending a few days in New York, it was clear to me that Chicago was basically a glorified shopping mall tucked within a worthless shithole of a city.  And, coming from the Detroit area, I happen to know a thing or two about what constitutes a worthless shithole of a city.

The scenery was better in New York.  The food was better in New York.  The atmosphere was better in New York.  The culture was better in New York.  The bars were better in New York.  (Pints of Guinness were less than five bucks, and I got roughly 1/3 of them for free, as compared to the bullshit Chicago bars with their $6 bottles of Sam Adams and $5 cover charges.)  The transportation was better in New York.  The layout of the streets was better in New York.  In summary - New York exceeded my expectations in every way.

I'm not married anymore and I don't take as many vacations as I once did.  Therefore I tend to approach whichever trips I do take with a rather subdued set of expectations.  Give me some nice scenery, a few decent pints of beer, and a chance to get away from the daily routine for a while.  That's good enough.  In the most recent case I expected the football game on Saturday to play a significant role in the trip as well.

Once again, my expectations were exceeded in every way. 

I saw incredible scenery, ranging in character from ancient architecture to a state-of-the-art stadium to sweeping vistas overlooking multiple seas.  I stopped at something like twenty-five pubs.  Each of them had its own unique character and friendly people making me look forward to the next one.  Along with my brother, I drove more than 1,200 miles around the island.  We saw exactly one cop car and exactly one traffic jam.  The cop car and the traffic jam were both in Dublin.  And the traffic jam only occurred because people (including us) were making their way to Croke Park for the All-Ireland semi-final between Dublin and Mayo on Sunday afternoon.  I can't drive ten miles at home without seeing multiple cops and at least one traffic jam.

Even the weather managed to provide a pleasant surprise for us.  Warm and sunny during the day; cool and breezy at night.  Excellent.  The food was about as bad as advertised, but hey, nobody's perfect.

We'll get to some of the stories in the days to come, but it turned out that the football game on Saturday was just something to do for a few hours before resuming the vacation.  It really wasn't a significant part of the trip at all.  And this, in an unexpected way, is the best thing I can say about my visit to Ireland.