Ireland

The Republic of Ireland has natural beauty aplenty—ravishing coasts, shimmeringly green valleys, rolling hills and stony mountains—and heaps of rich history. But it’s the traditions and the spirit of the Irish people that keep the visitor most transfixed—and draw you back to the Emerald Isle over and over again.

Let’s note off the bat that the outsider’s image of Ireland can be overly romanticized. Visions of frolicking leprechauns and foamy pints of pitch-black Guinness can distract from a heritage of real struggle and hardship. A tense relationship with Britain, for one, has broken out in outright war (see: Irish War of Independence) and the street violence of the Troubles (centered in but not restricted to Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom territory with which the Republic of Ireland shares the Emerald Isle). And the so-called “Celtic Tiger” economy tumbled hard and fast during the global recession of 2008.

Leave your preconceptions behind, though, and a journey to Ireland is, indeed, likely to thoroughly charm you. Irish culture, after all, has held tightly to traditions dating back centuries: folk songs, folk dances, myths, legends, and symbolism charged with a Gaelic flavor. Celtic undertones survived and even informed the spread of Christianity in Ireland, which takes its patron saint as Patrick—he who, legend has it, drove out the island’s snakes and symbolized the Holy Trinity with a shamrock. This love and reverence for the old folkways and a spiritually charged landscape mean the Irish people—despite the verve and modernity of Dublin and Cork—still draw much of their identity from the mythic countryside and its rural rhythms.

To that end, it’s best to compose an Irish vacation with both urban and rural experiences. Savor the historical architecture, the museums, the nightlife, and—yes—those rounds of Guinness in Dublin, Cork, Galway, and other handsome hubs, then surrender yourself to the farmland valleys, lonely highlands, and cliff-hewn seacoast. The rough heights of Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, the limestone tableland of the Burren, the sensual trace of the River Shannon, the mountain-flanked shores of Connemara: Some of the prettiest scenery in the British Isles awaits you, invariably with some age-old church or hidden-away pub on the side. And deepen all of your sightseeing by reading Ireland’s immortals: Joyce, Wilde, Beckett, and Yeats, among them.

It doesn’t take long for that Emerald Isle panache to percolate into your soul.