Ireland wants you to die. That’s one possible explanation for the roads here. I’d heard people talk about the infamous one-and-a-half lane roads, but those people were likely being paid by the tourist board to upsell it. One and a half lanes would be luxurious. I’d french Bertie Ahern for one and a half lanes. Hell, I’d French Bernie Ahern for a lane and a quarter. Because the roads are three quarters of a lane wide. Three quarters of a lane with traffic going in both directions. On serpentine switchback roads filled with blind curves with walls on either side and maniacal Irish people driving Audi A6′s at 120 kph straight toward you while weaving in and out of the sheep and elderly women that’ve wandered into the middle of the road. Oh, and the street signs are all Post-It notes stuck to the side of goats. Four days of driving here have tensed up my neck muscles so much that I look like a tortoise.

Apart from that, Ireland’s been delightful. Apart from the food, which amounts to bacon boiled in cream, stuffed into a sausage. Apart from the seafood, of course, which is fresh and delicious, because Ireland’s an island in the north Atlantic so small that one can cast a fishing line west from Dublin and have it land in Galway Bay. The fish, mussels, oysters, crab, and squid are all delicious, and we’ve eaten all of them. (Literally all of them. There are none left. Bring your own if you’re coming.)

Anyway, we had a lovely anniversary night at The G, a remarkably hip five-star hotel in Galway with 10-foot floor-to-ceiling windows in the rooms and dark, maze-like hallways punctuated by giant lozenges that might have been chairs. We had massages in the spa and fell asleep in the “relaxation chamber,” a giant glass room full of soft music and adjustable chaise and lined with planters full of live bamboo to keep people in the strip mall below from looking up your robe.

A sudden change of pace the next night as we switched to the first hostel of the trip (really of our lives), the Doorus House, all by itself on Galway Bay outside of Kinvara. It was kind of scrappy but surprisingly painless, especially since we ended up being the only guests in the place and were charmed by the resident dog, Dee O’Gee.

That afternoon, despite the cold and lack of sun, we wandered down to the “beach,” a depressing strip of muddy gravel whipped by freezing wind blowing off the water. The whole place seemed pretty deserted, except for a few lonely caravans presumably filled with people smart enough to enjoy the view from inside. But while we sat on a bench taking it in, a chubby, wet dog suddenly appeared and unceremoniously deposited a gravely tennis ball at our feet, as if he’d been waiting for us. We were reluctant to indulge him, since his owner wasn’t around to give permission. But he clearly started to suspect that we were too stupid to know how to work his ball, so stood up for ourselves and tossed it a few times. He fetched it joyfully then followed us up and down the beach asking for more, stopping occasionally to lie down in the freezing water for no particular reason.

We listened to live old time music in a pub in Kinvara that night and the next morning drove out to the Dingle peninsula, which claims to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, and the more you explore it, the more it stubbornly proves itself right. Green mountains appear out of nowhere and plunge toward the ocean, where the island seems to have been snapped apart, leaving a broken coastline of jagged cliffs. It amazes me that such a small island can comprise such widely varied landscapes, and it amazes me more that the Irish bothered to lay roads through the parts of them where clearly cars weren’t meant to go. It must be so the locals can gather round and night and watch the fireballs light up the hillsides as the rental cars go bouncing down the side of the mountains.

Despite that, I’ll miss Ireland and its persistent charm, and I’m sure I’ll regret not making more of the friendliness we found all around us. After a short night in a 16th century castle converted to a hostel, we’re off to the UK and its palatial motorways.