Put off the dirty old town

Ireland's countryside is great but Dublin and our restaurants are a letdown,say two tourists from the US, writes Rosita Boland.

Before

It's a Tuesday morning at Eliza Blues guesthouse in Temple Bar. Ben Shneiderman, a New Yorker, and his wife, an Englishwoman called Jenny Preece, are finishing breakfast. The couple, who live in Washington DC, have been in Dublin for two days and will be in Ireland for almost another three weeks. They're both in their 50s. It's Shneiderman's first time in Ireland; Preece was in the Republic briefly about 10 years ago. They plan to get out of the city in the next couple of days, renting a car and driving around the west. Preece in particular can't wait to get out of Dublin, which she really doesn't like.

"Temple Bar is like Leicester Square; we're probably old enough to be the parents of two-thirds of the people here. It's noisy, the traffic is terrible, there are roadworks everywhere and the streets are full of litter, cigarette butts and graffiti. Dublin is not a city for pedestrians, it's a city for trucks. I can't wait go get out into the country."

Shneiderman adds: "There's nothing to break up the troubled urban landscape. No flower boxes, for instance. And hardly any trees. And why isn't there more use made of the river? There should be floating restaurants and places you can sit out on the boardwalk and eat at night. We were amazed that there wasn't even somewhere to have a coffee at night on the river."

They've booked a bed and breakfast in Kinvara, in Co Galway, and will be going to Cork, but other than that they have few definite plans. "We want to go off and do stuff on our own, literary and heritage things," says Shneiderman. Preece knows what she wants to find. "We've tried to hear some traditional music here in Dublin, but the bars are so noisy and smoky it was unpleasant, so we're hoping to hear music in the countryside. We're hoping for beautiful landscape and tranquillity. Walking tracks. Small places," she says hopefully.

After

Eighteen days later Shneiderman and Preece, who are academics, are talking from a B&B in Glengarriff, Co Cork. They will be flying home the next day. Since leaving Dublin, in their rental car, they've been to Galway, the Aran Islands, Limerick, Cork and the Dingle, Iveragh and Beara peninsulas. So how did they find Ireland? "The question we kept asking ourselves is: What do we compare Ireland with?" says Shneiderman. "Did we expect the service, facilities and standards to be on a par with other countries, such as the US? If we were expecting that, no, we didn't get it."

They loved heritage centres, whose merits are the focus of so much debate in Ireland. "The interesting stuff for us was coming to understand some Irish history and culture. We like the well-done historical places. We went to Newgrange, Daniel O'Connell's house in Derrynane, and Clonmacnoise. For us the additional information was great, but Irish people have told us Newgrange is ruined now. We wished there were more heritage Dúchas sites like those ones."

They stayed in a mix of hotels and B&Bs, paying from €60 to €150 a night between them. They weren't so concerned about the standard of their rooms, although Preece was annoyed that the bathrooms hardly ever contained what she considered essentials, such as soap and shampoo. What exercised them most was the rudeness of many hoteliers and B&B owners. "The courtesy of certain innkeepers and restaurateurs was much appreciated but too infrequent, especially since everyone told us it was a slow summer," says Shneiderman.

Preece agrees. Her highlight was being in the west; she loved the scenery of the Aran Islands, Derrynane, Waterville and Dingle in particular. They didn't think there was lots of litter. "We rented bikes on the Aran Islands because it felt safe from traffic; we would have done it a lot more, but we didn't feel it was safe to cycle on the roads. We were scared, not calm. Lots of cars, fast drivers. If we had cycled on them the anxiety would have taken away the pleasure. That was a disappointment, not cycling more."

They ate out all the time. Neither was impressed with the food or the service. "I would say the service is quick," Preece says tactfully. "It arrived quickly. But people in restaurants were generally not particularly friendly. And the food was only very ordinary. Very plain." Shneiderman agrees. "The food was boring," he says.

"We were paying €25 each for overboiled vegetables and either a piece of meat or fish with not much flavour. It was definitely overpriced. We did like the chowders and soups, though," says Preece. "And some of the breakfasts were terrific; we often didn't need lunch after them."

They paid €50 a day to rent a car from Budget but were dismayed to discover they had to pay an additional €320 for insurance, which they had thought their credit-card policy would cover. "We got a pretty unpleasant guy in the Dublin office, and the car they gave us first was so run down we had to bring it back and get another. There was a broken windscreen wiper, for instance. We were in Ireland: what did they think we were going to do when it rained - not drive?" says Shneiderman.

They agreed that toilet facilities in bars and restaurants were usually badly kept. It struck them also that there were different kinds of tourists in different places. "The Aran Islands were really busy, full of young people. On the Ring of Kerry most of the people we saw were our age," says Preece.

Shneiderman says: "Doolin and Dingle were nice, but Killarney was overcrowded. It seemed like Dingle had it worked out well, with parking on the sea, away from the town, whereas Killarney was packed with cars everywhere. Cars are a big issue in Ireland; there are so many of them everywhere."

They got to hear traditional music in several places, which they loved, although they said they got good at discovering when they had stumbled across music that was happening anyway and music that was aimed at tourists. Little things puzzled them and made them fret: the lack of phone boxes - "does everyone have cellphones?" - and the apparent lack of hospitals and police stations. "We didn't know who we would have contacted in an emergency."

They spent about €200 a day between them and say that, overall, they had a great time once they got out of Dublin. Did they think they got value for money? Again, they say they were not sure what they were comparing Irish prices with. But Preece is sure of one thing: "If you think of Ireland as a place where you can come for a relatively cheap holiday, that's not true."