I’m only visiting Ireland out of spite. I spent a year here, through the end of 2020 and the start of 2021, and took advantage of a marginally open autumn to travel around and see the island. And there were a few places on my list which remained stubbornly out of reach, either due to travel mishaps¹ or through pandemic restrictions. This trip was an attempt to visit those places anyway, dammit.

But they say you should never do anything out of spite and maybe there’s something to that, because I’ve spent most of the trip getting sick or being sick or recovering from sickness. What I thought was a run-of-the-mill muscle spasm in Prague lingered long enough in Ireland that I eventually popped a couple muscle relaxants.² This is a big deal; the pills³ generally take me out of commission for a day or two, so I usually avoid them. And they worked about as I expected: my back hurt less⁴ and I had a weird 16-hour period where I was exhausted and trying to sleep but also had been sleeping nearly constantly so couldn’t stay asleep for long and ended up kind of shifting between dreaming, hallucinating, doomscrolling, and watching Strange New Worlds in 20-minute bursts.⁵

And you know what? It wasn’t muscle spasms at all. I mean, it was, but they were being triggered by generalized muscle aches which was the first phase of what turned out to be me getting sick. And it was a weird illness. I never got a runny nose or sore throat or a cough, which is usually how I know I caught something. This was all muscle soreness and fatigue and nausea. The fourth day I had a fever for about 8 hours. I barely ate for three days, and even after I was on the mend it was a struggle to eat more than one small meal a day.

To put it mildly it sucks to be sick, and it sucks especially to be sick when you’re on your own. I might have eaten better if someone was running out looking for food I could manage,⁶ And I would have been less bored. But I can count my blessings. I hadn’t made many plans so I didn’t end up canceling much. I had booked in to a few places for longer stretches, so I didn’t have to hop in a car and drive very often. And I’ll make it to Connemara eventually. It’ll be there.

I had recovered sufficiently by the time I made it to Portrush that I was able to go on the Bushmills Distillery tour. Bushmills has been operating since 1784⁷ and the distillery is a popular attraction, being just down the road from the Giant’s Causeway. I had crisscrossed the area in 2020 and it was always closed then, so I was hellbent on visiting it eventually. It’s worth it if you’re in the area.

The most interesting thing about it for me is how few people are actually needed to keep the company running. In 2022 the Old Bushmills Distillery was capable of producing five million liters of alcohol every year. In 2023 they opened a new distillery on site which more than doubled the capacity to eleven million liters of alcohol. That’s all managed by less than 200 people on site.⁸

I have two suggestions if you’re considering the tour; first, go Monday through Thursday. It turns out the workforce knocks off about midday on Friday, so if you’re touring the site on Friday afternoon or the weekend everything past distilling — from putting the distilled whiskey into the barrels to bottling the whiskey once it’s aged — is shut down. It makes the distillery look even more like a ghost town, since there’s basically only one worker in a command center managing the whole process up to that point.⁹

My second suggestion: skip the extended whiskey tasting. Or, if you must, be prepared. I had signed up, and plowed into the seven samples provided with an enthusiasm born of ignorance. As expected, some were nice and some weren’t.¹⁰ But I didn’t do the math. The pours in the tasting weren’t the samples I was expecting but at least a solid shot’s worth. Most people made do with a sip or two of each. I downed the lot.

I have a hard time getting properly drunk. I tend to get sick long before I’m wasted. It turns out the trick is to be unaware it’s happening, and drinking eight¹¹ “sample” whiskeys over a single hour is a great way of doing it. I felt okay afterwards, but it took a while for all that alcohol to reach my bloodstream. After 90 minutes I was having difficulty walking a straight line.

But God watches over drunks and fools. I stumbled down the street to a pub serving perfectly respectable food and had a rather nice dinner, then stumbled back to my car, surveyed the situation, and decided rather prudently that discretion was the better part of valor. I settled in for a nap. By the time I woke up it was late evening, I was sober enough to drive, and I made it back to Portrush in time to nab the last parking space in the lot of the B&B.

I’ve spent the last few days in Dublin, waiting for a flight. In an alternate timeline I dropped the car off on Monday and immediately hopped a flight to Cyprus, but I had an emergency pop up¹² which completely hosed my next couple weeks of travel. Instead of Cyprus I’m making a detour to Newfoundland by way of Paris.

I haven’t been back to Dublin since 2021, after the lockdowns lifted. It’s nice to see it back, even if that means it’s overrun by tourists again. I joined in by touring the Jameson Distillery on Bow Street, which opened back up for tours literally the week after I left the last time.¹³ And I managed a haircut and a laundry service, both badly overdue.

Beyond that I’ve mostly just sat in my hotel room. It’s been a stressful time, and it’s going to continue to be for a bit. I’m happy to order takeout and putter around for a few days, before the world gets busy again.

Next: Paris (CDG) to Saint John (YSJ)
Prev: Prague (PRG) to Dublin (DUB)

Footnotes

¹ My first trip through Connemara was spoiled when the entire available roster of bus drivers from Sligo came down with COVID and I couldn’t get down in time to pick up a rental car.

² Only after landing in Dublin and driving to Galway for the night, then driving on to Westport, where I was staying for a few days and knew I’d be able to recover. I can’t imagine trying to drive on those things.

³ Cyclobenzaprine, for those playing along at home. Available over the counter in Mexico!

⁴ I’d say it’s the difference between trying to sleep with a fly flying around the room and trying to sleep with a fly crawling across your face.

⁵ All I know is that I’m very relieved I knew about the musical episode ahead of time.

⁶ I bought a roll of cheap chocolate digestive biscuits which served as the bulk of my calories for the first few days. They didn’t make me nauseous, I think because they were so dry and bland my body didn’t recognize them as food.

⁷ The 1608 on the label refers to when a local landowner was granted the right to distill whiskey, and its connection to Bushmills is somewhat tenuous. Critically, Jameson was founded in 1780, so Bushmills is rather emotionally invested in the earlier date.

⁸ Bushmills is owned by Proximo, an American-based spirits company which also owns 1800 Tequila, Three Olives Vodka, Kraken Rum, and Boodles Gin, among a smattering of others. Proximo is controlled by the Beckmann family of Mexico, who also controls Jose Cuervo. I’m not suggesting the workers for Bushmills are mistreated or unfairly compensated, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a lot of the profits for a flagship Irish whiskey brand are staying anywhere close to Ireland.

⁹ And they had apparently buggered off to go check on something when we passed through, so the place was devoid of workers.

¹⁰ The Black Bush was okay, and the Distillery Exclusive which isn’t available anywhere else is pretty nice. And I kind of liked the “Caribbean Rum” cask finished whiskey, which was kind of slight for drinking but I bet goes great in your more fruity mixed drinks.

¹¹ The tasting was seven glasses, and I accidentally got on the tour which left 15 minutes early, so they gave me an extra one when I got back to the bar while I waited for my tour group.

¹² Everyone’s fine, it’s not a big deal, don’t worry.

¹³ I’m off the whiskey tastings for a bit so I booked a tour with a cask draw and a cocktail class, only to be told when I arrived that was far too much alcohol and I was going to have to downgrade the tour to a non-alcoholic one. Which is fine, except there’s a bar in the distillery more than willing to sell you drinks before the tour, and we’re in the middle of Dublin as well, so if I was dead set on getting sloppy drunk I think I would have found a way.

The Jameson Distillery in Dublin was shut down in the early 1970s when they moved production to Cork. The Bow Street location has been reopened as a visitor’s center. The tour is slickly produced but you’re not going to see any actual production lines like you do for Bushmills. And it’s all megacorporations anyway; Jameson is owned by Pernod Ricard, currently selling Jameson Whiskey and Beefeater Gin to Russia.