[1CAVCCO15MED]

Yep, kissed the Blarney Stone. Chris, whatever you do, go to Killarney and do the Ring of Kerry. That is the most beautiful place I have ever seen and as you know, I've seen some pretty places. I found myself trying to figure out how to swing moving there. The place smells so good. Everywhere you go they are cooking Irish food so the smell is everywhere. Irish cuisine is comfort food. Meat and potatoes for the most part but I saw very few fat people and they were probably Americans. There were very few fast food restaurants, mainly in Dublin and everyone ate three hearty meals a day but did not eat between meals. Connection? They destroyed a lot of my stereotypes. The population is young so every where you go it looks like you are in a college town. Since joining the European Union they have gone from being one of the poorest in Europe to the richest per capita second only to Luxembourg. They did this with free education at all levels and investment from the EU in Irish infrastructure. Roads are bing improved and even the 100 mile Ring of Kerry road is now widened to two lanes. Used to be kind of hard to drive a bus on. I saw no poverty but did see a couple of homeless. Each had a dog sleeping with him. New houses are being built but the credit crunch has hit all of Europe. Everywhere there are the stone remnants of famine houses. They are protected but you can only tear them down to build a house. Most new houses had a famine house with a tin roof as an out building. We passed a whole village of ruined famine houses. Everyone in the village starved to death. The Irish are always the first to raise money for famine relief anywhere in the world. Gas is $8 a gallon over there but traffic was congested. No big cars or SUVs to speak of but I did see one Hummer. It was for sale. The priest molestations hit Ireland the hardest and they have left the Church in the hundred thousands. A few years ago it was 70% practicing Catholics and now it is 20%. That is still better than the rest of Europe where Christians are at 2%. We passed a field with a huge 100 ft cross. Our guide told us that is where Pope John Paul spoke for the first time in Ireland. Close to a million people stood in that field that day. One Irish Bishop introduced the Pope and another, the "Singing Priest" sang to him. Then the sex scandals broke and it turned out both the bishops had illegitimate children and one had used church money to silence one of the mothers. You got to understand Ireland only has two million people so roughly half the country stood in the field that day. Ireland doesn't have a history, it has a tragedy. The only thing that sustained them through that was their Catholic faith and now at the moment of their liberation from a thousand years of this the Catholic Church betrayed them beyond all forgiveness by molesting their children.