Anyone who has sat straight-faced as a Liverpudlian guffaws at his own joke, watched a Yorkshireman happily get a round in, or met a Norfolk farmer with his own teeth, can vouch that regional stereotypes aren’t always accurate. And if you have visited Dublin in the last few years in order to soak up the legendary Irish hospitality, only to be blanked as you attempt to chat at the bar, you can console yourself that it wasn’t necessarily your stagnant odour. Every country goes through a honeymoon of tourism, when numbers are low and Americans a novelty, and a sad consensus of opinion is that southern Ireland left this period a few years back. Go to Dublin, they say in Belfast, and you won’t meet a Dubliner.
While Irish tourism boomed thirty years ago, when every ethnicity of American staked a claim to ancestry in the Emerald Isle, no one wanted to know about Northern Ireland. “Men with eyebrows on their cheeks, toothless simpletons, badly tarmaced drives, horses running round council estates, and men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings” was Alan Partridge’s summary of the country back in 1997.
But now, ten years after the Troubles ended, Northern Ireland tourism is booming. When Caterer sent me out there to report on it, I expected plastic versions of the Giants Causeway and delinquents in Guiness hats. But all i found out there was exceptional hospitality. Go and you won’t be disappointed. It’s like Prague 15 years ago or Dublin 30 years ago, when the population still cared and the barmen were local.
As soon as tourists catch on to a place it tends to get chewed up and spat out, absent of its local charm. Sort of like disassembling a Jaguar E type and rebuilding a Ford Ka. So if you can get to Northern Ireland before the hoards, i can't recommend it highly enough. Visit Belfast’s pubs and watch proper local bands not paid to sing “The Irish Rover” ad infinitum, eat at the excellent James Street South, lunch at Nick’s Warehouse, stay at The Merchant hotel or any little guest house if money is short, then pop over to Derry, let locals give you their own take on Bloody Sunday, walk the walls, eat Irish stew in a ramshackle restaurant, stay at Beech House Country Hotel and drink whiskey with the locals at the bar until the early hours. Britain has so few regions unpummelled by tourism, it's a novelty to find a place that exceeds reputation in every way.
Bill Wolesey, owner of The Merchant, gave me his own take on why the country is so friendly. “When you spend thirty years worried about going out on the town, you get pretty good at throwing house parties, when you welcome anyone and everyone into your home on good faith.”
Comments (1)
I loved going through your article, you have a great delivery style! I have forwarded a link to my dad, and will definately be returning back for more.
Posted by student | November 25, 2009 9:41 PM
Posted on November 25, 2009 21:41