via 'I Can Read'

It’s all very well and good to write about places I love, places I’ve been and places I think you should visit. There is some merit in recommending a great place for hot chocolate or the best spot to eat All You Can Eat Chinese food in Las Vegas. People are interested in that and by offering suggestions I can help, in some small way. But what about the other part of the world? What about the sizeable portion of the world, the inhabitants of the imaginary village nobody wants to read about, what is their place in all of this? While writing this I keep thinking about Voluntourism.

At present I know of a few people helping build schools in parts of Africa and South America. Their plans are typical of others who have given up their time to do the same: work hard for a few weeks, experience life south of the equator, be shocked by how hard people have it there and how easy we live and for the remaining fortnight or three weeks of their trip head off white water rafting, climbing, touring or just make a quick exit to the nearest “civilised” city and have fun. Does this sound cynical? It should. Many of these people organised quizzes, barbeques, auctions and other charitable events to get them where they are now. They asked me and you for money to pay for their flights and accommodation because at the end of the day they were going to Africa (the dark continent that rarely gets a country-specific breakdown) to HELP CHILDREN.

My problem is not why they go but rather how they go about it. Why do you not fund the trip yourself, sacrificing nights out and superfluous clothing for a few weeks? Why not attempt to join a recognised charitable organisation working in areas of real need for a few months instead of calling your three weeks in Kenya your good and everlasting deed for humanity? If the call of charity is so strong for these people why must their first foray be in a country thousands of miles from their own while several at-home charities waste away due to lack of volunteers?

I say all of this from an outsider’s perspective. I have never engaged in charity work outside this country and, sadly, have no immediate plans to do so. I sincerely applaud the work, the hard back-breaking work, of those people who give their lives, their time and their skills to changing the lives of those less fortunate. I am not so blind, however, to see that the majority of my peers who “go to Africa” for a month to “help build schools” are doing so in a flippant and selfish way. Helping people should not be an album in your Facebook photos; it should be something more than an anecdote to tell at dinner parties. Flying to faraway lands with the intention of helping them is not tourism, it is work: hard, difficult and hopefully rewarding work. The sooner people realise this the sooner real problems might actually begin to be solved, not temporarily fixed by the band-aid of voluntourism.

Piazza del Duomo, Milan © Ciara Norton

Milan is not as pretty as Florence. It is not saturated in ruins and history and religion like Rome. The food’s okay, but it’s no Bologna. I’m told it’s under sea level so it’s most assuredly not Venice. Milan suffers from comparisons drawn with every other Italian city and it is in doing this that visitors make their first mistake. Forget everything else you’ve seen of Italy and embrace the city, it’s the only way you and Milan will  get along.

I say this with love and experience. I believe the reason I forgive Milan so much is because it gave me my first taste of Italy. My Dad was working in the city and we visited regularly during that time. Our initial contact was a week spent there after a week skiing in the north. We spent our days touring and seeing most of what the city has to offer a family with three teenagers. Hours were spent in and around Piazza del Duomo and in the nearby castle and park. We arrived just before Ash Wednesday and witnessed streets thronged with men, women and children celebrating – if that’s the correct word to use here –  the beginning of Lent. As we walked through the streets that day, our clothes and hair ruined with silly string, it became obvious to me that this was not a city that worshipped tourists; Milan tolerates but does not bow to tourism. The Milanese are too busy doing other things to stop and try to sell you anything; you have to make and find your own fun here.

The highlight of that trip was a day in the San Siro stadium watching AC Milan demolish Catania. The tifosi were out in force despite the tame nature of the game itself. Flares were thrown, massive flags unfurled and voices worn thin by screaming, supporting, admonishing. Getting the metro home that night it felt like we were spending a week living in a real Italian city, a city where people – including my Dad  -worked, lived and played.

Since then I’ve always loved Milan. During my year in Bologna people would stare in disbelief as I tried to defend this city. “Ugh, it’s so industrial“, “It’s ugly” they would say. I forgot how to defend it because it was an industrial city and, unfortunately, the buildings tended more toward functional than frivolous. But no, I could not forsake Milan. There was a part of me that saw past the greyness, the so-called industy ( a dirty word for those people who feel that industry should be hidden from their delicate Art History Major-ed eyes) and fought for a city that housed the Last Supper, was home to the magnificent Duomo (even better now it’s been cleaned outside) and is at the centre of that most beautiful and daring of industries: fashion.

Scott Schuman, also known as The Sartorialist, says of Milan,

Milan gets a bad rap as Italy’s industrial city but I think that’s dead wrong. If you get out of the city centre into some of the neighbourhoods it’s just as beautiful as Venice, or Florence. It still retains its old-world charm – waiters still wear beautiful white jackets in a lot of the most traditional restaurants and bars – but Milan is not trapped by its history like Rome or Venice. It is a thriving modern city and Italy’s centre of fashion and design. Still, it has some of the most beautiful and serene museums, trattorias and courtyards in the country. Milan has tremendous cultural influence on the rest of Italy, Europe and the World.

That says it all, really. It’s a wonderful city. In the last few years I’ve gone on weekends and daytrips and it continues to surprise me. For every time I’ve been caught in the rain by the Navigli [canals] searching in vain for an open pizzeria there are multiple trips to Peck to ogle the most amazing food ever, walks around the streets teeming with designer boutiques and hours of getting lost in my own thoughts as you people-watch from a café’s window.  If you are going don’t listen to anyone but yourself. Milan is a great, great city that will show you more of Italy than a trip on a Venetian Gondola or a day’s pounding the many pavements in Rome.

- I’ve written about Milan’s bike rental scheme, BikeMi, here

Straight ahead are the skyscrapers and cranes working towards modernising the city, pulling it into the 21st century. To their left is the Sagrada Família, a half-finished temple intended to dwarf everything else when complete.

Beyond that is the Barri Gòtic, or Gothic Quarter, its winding streets untouched by time and commerce. Nearer the water is the Olympic Village, a reminder of Barcelona’s brightest moment in the sporting sun, and the Camp Nou stadium, the venue for countless crazy nights of soccer glory.

Inside La Sagrada Familia © Ciara Norton

The capital of Catalonia, Barcelona prides itself on its heritage and dedication to the language and customs of the Catalan people. Most people speak Catalan as well as Spanish, streets signs are in both languages and many shops and restaurants advertise only in Catalan.

It is this distinction from mainstream Spanish culture and language that lends Barcelona an offbeat air that permeates the streets of the city. Gaudí began the architectural revolt against straight lines and uniformity when he started his career in the city, and it is obvious that his spirit of adventure lives on in the people and the buildings.

Almost everything he touched is worth visiting. Even the most art-weary tourists can only marvel at the union of nature and art that is Parc Güell. Mosaic tiles on stone arcades, sculptures of lizards and snakes decorated with broken glass, and a gatehouse with chimneys that look good enough to eat are all in a park used by the people of the city for recreation and relaxation.

Park Guell © Ciara Norton

If you start at this park and work your way towards the sea you can visit, with the help of an efficient metro system, all that Barcelona has to offer.

Though possible, it is not advisable to ignore Gaudí. Other landmarks bearing his inimitable touch are La Pedrera, a wave-like apartment building with sculptural chimneys on its roof. Each chimney is a masterpiece, and each set of steps leads to another level – a vertigo-inducing fright.

The Sagrada Família is Gaudí’s unfinished cathedral. Begun more than 100 years ago, and due for completion in 2025, it is a living and breathing work of art, its interior a building site, its exterior a work of deranged genius.

To fully understand the concept of this church and how it will finally look, visit the museum in the basement. Walking by workshops where artists and sculptors labour on this living piece of history is fascinating, and the mind boggles at the scale of the task ahead.

There is, of course, more to Barcelona than one man and his art. The heart of the city, its version of O’Connell street, is La Rambla. This wide, tree-lined street has been romanticised as the heart of Barcelona, but it is now little more than a tourist trap, specialising in overpriced restaurants and some of the city’s seedier spots. It is here that pickpockets – the warning given to everyone who goes to Barcelona – operate.

La Rambla is convenient as the starting point for a wander through the nearby Barri Gòtic and Jewish quarter, a maze of narrow streets with tiny squares and bigger monuments, such as Barcelona’s cathedral, currently undergoing refurbishment.

Atop La Predera © Ciara Norton

Losing yourself in this area can yield a different experience of Barcelona – the shops, cafes and bars are charming and less tourist-orientated than their neighbours a few blocks over. A cloudy day during our visit prompted us to spend hours here, stopping at bars for tapas and mojitos, all the while enjoying the slower pace of life in this part of the city.

While Barcelona, as Spain’s second-largest city, is undeniably a hub of activity, it is also a beach-lovers’ destination, with miles of blue-flag sandy beaches. The area near the main beach is Barceloneta, an avenue of shops, seafood restaurants and bars.

The beach itself is remarkably clean and equipped with anything a sunbather could want. From here you can see down to the Olympic Village, the most notable landmark being the Frank Gehry-designed Peix d’Or, a glittering fish-shaped architectural sculpture along the seafront.

Definitely a city of the night, Barcelona has numerous bars and restaurants that open long after midnight, when the streets are still full of music and of people circling the city, soaking in the atmosphere. Plaça Reial, off La Rambla, is one such area. Sidecar, a popular haunt for Barcelona’s student and artist population, opens until 2am every night, with a nominal entrance fee for the club downstairs if 5am seems like a more appropriate bedtime.

If dancing until dawn does not appeal – it takes energy to sightsee, after all – then a night of traditional Catalan music at Palau de la Música Catalana, considered one of the world’s most beautiful concert halls, might be just the ticket for absorbing some culture and preserving some beauty sleep.

Barcelona is a city in constant flux, always trying to better itself and its cityscape. Its combination of beach and artistic beauty is a break from the sun-holiday norm often associated with Spanish destinations.

Where to stay, where to go and where to eat

5 places to stay

Marina View BB. Paseo de Colom, 00-34-666-463991, marinaviewbcn.com. The Marina View BB is ideally located at the seafront of the city, within easy reach of the centre. The rooms are modern, comfortable and equipped with everything one might need after a day in the city or on the beach. Rooms from about €110 per night.

Urbany. 97 Avenue Meridiana, 00-34-932-458414, barcelonaurbany.com. A modern take on a traditional hostel, Urbany is close to the Sagrada Família. En-suite double rooms cost about €50-€60 a night, depending on the time of year.

Petit Palace Opera Garden Hotel. 10 La Boqueria, 00-34-933-020092. This small boutique hotel is in the Gothic quarter, close to La Rambla and other city-centre attractions. Rooms are spacious and comfortable, and cost about €120 per night in high season.

Ciutat Barcelona Hotel. 33-35 Carrer Princesa, Barcelona, 00-34-932-697475, ciutatbarcelona.com. Centrally located in the Born quarter, this light-filled hotel has a small pool on the roof terrace – perfect for cooling down after a day of sightseeing. Double rooms €90-€130.

Hotel Omm. 265 Rosselló, 00-34-934-454000, hotelomm.es. If you like luxury, then Hotel Omm could be perfect. Featuring a lively bar where the people of the city come to play, and an award-winning restaurant, Moo, there’s every danger of arriving in the hotel and never leaving. Rooms are not cheap, through, ranging from €240 per night to more than €500.

5 places to eat

Els Quatre Gats. 3 Carrer Montsió, 00-34-933-024140, 4gats.com. A landmark for more than a century, this restaurant specialises in traditional Spanish cuisine. Though it is sometimes more about the history of this former cabaret bar than the food, it is nonetheless worth a visit for the inexpensive food and the atmosphere.

Les Quinze Nits. 6 Plaça Reial, 00-34-933-173075, lesquinzenit.com. This restaurant attracts the crowds on busy nights, so expect to wait for a table. The menu is a mix of seafood and meat dishes. It is incredibly good value: a three-course meal with wine will set you back less than €25. Try the traditional Catalan custard for dessert.

Taxidermiste. 8 Plaça Reial, 00-34- 934-124536, xidermista.com. Don’t let the name put you off: the food is great and completely lacking in stuffed dead animals. There are three menus here, which can get a little confusing. The bistro menu is the best value. If you want to sit on the terrace you must order tapas – also good value – but the à la carte menu is on the pricey side.

La Paciencia. 72 Sant Pau, 00-34-934-415387. This is a small bar that does tasty tapas and excellent cocktails. The tapas menu is extensive but small enough for you to know it’s being freshly made. Feast on patatas bravas, croquettes, chorizo and everything in between while watching the world go by.

Quimet and Quimet. 25 Poeta Cabanyes, 00-34-934-423142. This tiny family-run bar is home to the best and most adventurous tapas around. Standing with one of the many choices of wine in hand, you can sample any number of Spanish meats and cheeses.

5 places to go

Parc Güell. Avenue del Santuari de Sant Josep de la Muntanya. Take a trip to the park and you can spend a wonderful day exploring its many hidden gems. It also contains Casa Museu Gaudí (casamuseugaudi.org), exhibiting artefacts from the artist’s life. When the sun is shining there is no better place to enjoy Barcelona.

La Pedrera. 92 Passeig de Gràcia, 00-34-934-845900, lapedreraeducacio.org. Casa Milá, or La Pedrera to the natives of the city, was one of Gaudí’s most successful experiments in modern architecture. For €9.50 an audio tour guides you through the building to the roof and museum in the attic. A fascinating journey into the innovative mind of the artist.

Mercat de Sant Josep. Plaça de la Boqueria, 00-34-933-182017, boqueria.info. Situated on La Rambla, this is Barcelona’s biggest and best-stocked fruit and vegetable market. It is well worth visiting to take in the sights and sounds of the city – especially handy if you’re self-catering.

Palau de La Música Catalana. Sant Pere Més Alt, 00-34-902-442882, palaumusica.org. A beautiful concert hall that hosts national and international acts, always conscious of the preservation of the Catalonian musical tradition. The concert hall itself is a beautiful building, worth visiting if only to marvel at the impressive auditorium.

Barri Gòtic. Containing a Roman trail and the Jewish quarter, the Barri Gòtic is a district of the city not to be missed. It is rich in museums, churches, shops, restaurants, plazas, bars and anything else a tourist could want for. Stop off on Plaça del Rei and see the former residences of the kings of Catalonia and Aragon (museuhistoria.bcn.cat).

Hit the shops

Plaça Catalunya. One of the main squares in the city has everything a shopaholic could need – and more. The streets off the plaza contain the usual high-street names, and the plaza itself is home to El Corte Inglés, Spain’s most prominent department store. elcorteingles.es.

Hot spot

Sidecar. 7 Plaça Reial, 00-34-933-021586, sidecar.es. A small bar with movies projected on to the wall, beer starting at €2.50 a bottle and an indie-rock soundtrack that makes this one of the busiest spots in the area. The club downstairs, open most nights until 5am, is deservedly popular with locals and tourists alike.

Go there

Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) flies to Barcelona from Belfast, Cork and Dublin. Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Dublin and Shannon to Girona, and from Dublin to Reus, both of which are about an hour by bus from the centre of Barcelona.

Published in the Irish Times, September 12, 2009

Vegas was our holiday from a holiday. It was our last hoorah before we had to pack our backs and return home after a summer in San Francisco. It seemed wrong to be so close (40 minutes flight time) to this famed city and not partake of the crazy so we went.

Excalibur's giant slot machine and Me

Our hotel “The Wild Wild West Gambling Hall and Hotel” sounded like fun.* We joked in the taxi on the way there that the hotel would be shaped like a cowboy hat and the bedrooms themed like saloons. Arriving at the two storey motel-esque joint so close but yet so far from the strip we were nothing if not a little disappointed. But it was cheap and close enough to everything we needed. Now I know that hotels in Vegas are generally cheap and that you can stay in one of the huge casinos for about as much as we paid for our old gambling hall. We didn’t know that then so we made do with the aging decor, the hard towels and the kidney shaped puddle they called a pool.

But Vegas isn’t about the shape of your pool or your proximity to the In’N'Out Burger across the road. Vegas is about casinos, about opulence, about tastelessness and everything seedy in life under one roof. The opening lines of ‘Little Bribes’ capture perfectly my first glimpse of Vegas: “The Eiffel Tower built to smaller scale, the freshest oxygen I’d ever inhale, I tapped a bottle against the safety rail, killing time”. We arrived at the southern end of the strip beside New York, New York Casino. From the badly lit pathway you can admire a rollercoaster winding its way around the Statue of Liberty, and yes, that is the Empire State Building behind it. Sort of.

That’s the thing about Vegas. Leave aside the free drinks – if you’re gambling – and the 24 hour wedding chapels – if you’re crazy – and all you have left is something trying to be everything all the while failing to be anything. My own memories of Vegas are walking along the strip. We had no car and our feet worked so we walked wherever we needed to go. This led to nearly ending up on the freeway close to death but, in general, it worked out well for us. It was when you walk around Vegas that you see what the city is about.

The strip is ring fenced in, a tiny little spot in the middle of a desert. Yes, the buildings are huge but they’re also spaced so widely apart that in between each one is smaller buildings housing drug stores selling Elvis sunglasses and miles of pathway full of men hawking strip clubs and brothels. If Sodom and Gomorrah had a younger, trashier and much less knowledgeable sister Vegas would be it. This is a city that has no aspirations to be anything it is not, but it has lots of pretensions. Its hotels have lobbies that recall the glory days of empires, but the rooms upstairs are uniform in their generic attempts at luxury.

Perhaps I don’t understand Vegas. I can’t see the attraction of shiny, new, fake history. Therein lies my issue with the city; I ‘get’ it but I don’t understand. While there we ate burgers and tried to cheat our way past the MSG at the All-You-Can-Eat Chinese Food buffet. I made pilgrimages for burgers in the sun while my friends fried by the puddle. After three days we needed a break, we needed something to see that wasn’t fake. So we found the cheapest trip we could to the Gran Canyon (1 day roundtrip, ten hours on a bus, two hours at the Canyon) and saw that outside the strip Nevada ain’t so bad. Driving past the suburbs where the people who keep Las Vegas going live I slowly but surely realised that real, live people love Vegas. They live there, they work there and it is their city and their live, their livelihood. I always imagined it was a drop out zone, a transient place nobody could actually live.

Past the suburbs we marvelled at the Hoover Dam and slowly made our way through Arizona until one of the most spectacular natural wonders on this planet came into view. There is little sullying the canyon and though I haven’t seen it I don’t think the new visitors centre with walkway above the canyon would change this for me. We shared our lunch with tame squirrels and wandered around jumping from flat rock to flat rock, all the while staring in the beautiful abyss. It sounds trite now but it really was a release. After a day of driving through nothing but nature it was easier to return to the hotel/motel, eat fried chicken and inhale the pure oxygen.

I don’t think I’ll go back but I advise you to go. Go see it, experience it. Lose yourself in a casino and emerge at four in the morning with no idea what time it could possibly be. Grab the arms of the robot amputee slot machines and try your luck. You might love it, it might be the city for you. It just wasn’t the city for me and every time I try to explain why I sound like a kill-joy prude.

One night as we walked and the men still tried to sell us, a group of girls, whatever form of sex they could I saw a pick-up truck drive by. In the passenger seat a bride in a white gown was holding a three foot margarita and laughing.

*This was 2004, a time before Trip Advisor helped in this regard..

© Haven in Paris

I would like to stay here, at “Haven in Paris”. These are self catering apartments in Paris that are so utterly pretty and beautiful I am doing all I can not to search for cheap flights and go now. And while they’re not cheap they’re not too expensive either. If you fill the apartments to full occupancy you’ll pay far less than you would in the confines of a stuffy hotel room.

Chilling out here versus chilling in a nasty hotel bar? © Haven in Paris

When away I’ve almost always stayed in self-catering. Having the facility to keep drinks cool, rustle up a sandwich when you’re the only hungry one in your group and stay in with simple food and takeaway wine on a quiet evening is so convenient. And while I live for morning coffees on the piazza, boozy lunches and dining al fresco in the evening I also like keeping my options open.

Staying self catering also allows me to indulge my love for supermarkets, odd I know.. I like seeing what others consider staples and, but of course, checking out how much cheaper everything is when you’re not in Ireland. In Spain you can find Oreos coated in milk chocolate and Sangria in a carton for less than a euro, both definitely worth the supermarket trip. And while wandering the aisles of yet another chain store may not get your blood pumping I find it a useful way to acclimatise yourself to a new city and neighbourhood, that and having a ” we don’t speak the same language but we’re trying our best” conversation with the lady in the local bakery. You’ll come out with nothing you thought you wanted and everything you need to know for the journey ahead.

I don’t hate the concept of hostels. I don’t. When travelling to experience places there’s really no need for accommodation with all the bells and whistles. A comfortable bed in a clean and safe environment is really all one might need. So, really, hostels are great. And most of the hostels I’ve stayed in have been clean, safe, well-managed and comfortable with decent beds.

It’s the people. The people. Hostels attract people who are travelling without moving. They’re seeing the world from the windows of the hostel’s bar, experiencing the culture of a city while working at the hostel’s reception. I’m basing this view on experience, the experience of one particular hostel in Edinburgh and the traps hostel people fall into.

It was old but not rundown. The dorms were closely packed but it was cheap and cheerful. From the start we felt at home. There was a kitchen area, a snug with loads of worn books and the bare minimum in terms of toilet facilities and comfort. Our dorm quickly filled up with other Irish girls, all in search of work and somewhere to stay for the summer. Aside from us the hostel seemed populated by Australians who arrived in Edinburgh months or years beforehand and forgot to leave.

This is the hostel problem. At some stage most of the visitors end up working or living there,  groups of Australians and New Zealanders who use them as micro-employment agencies. You think I’m exaggerating?

I had the top bunk during my stay. The bottom was the home of a woman in her 40s from Australia who had arrived there about ten years beforehand and NEVER LEFT. She had a job in Edinburgh and the amount it cost her to stay there every week (taking into account that there was a reduced rate for long stays) was more than enough to pay rent on a place that wasn’t the size of her bunk bed. Her green suitcase sat at the end of her bed, waiting. Across the room there was another girl from the southern hemisphere, living out of her suitcase. She worked in a restaurant up the road from the hostel; she’d been there for six months.

We fell into the trap. A flat was hard to come by so we started to toy with the idea of staying there all summer. After a week we started to enquire into the cleaning for a free night deal they had. For free one or two night’s stay (details are fuzzy) you had to do a cleaning shift in the hostel: cleaning bathrooms, changing beds, hoovering. It was alright work, not the greatest thing I’ve ever done but it was only a morning and worth it financially.

Going into the rooms you learned that the two women in my dorm were not alone. Other tenants had turned one tiny bed-space into their homes, pictures and posters adorned the walls. The smaller two-bed dorms could’ve belonged in a college dormitory or a boarding school. It was odd, wondering what made these people stop their journeys in that place, for that length of time.

And then there’s the social aspect. In a giant hostel in London – a former prison if I’m not mistaken – the inmates socialised in the cheap bar at night. Every night was themed, every night was where music went to die. And every night a decent sized group of people spent their evenings there, it was their local. I wanted to scream at them, “You’re in LONDON for chrissakes! LONDON! Don’t you FOOLS know what you’re MISSING?”. But I didn’t. Australians are hardy folk and I didn’t fancy my chances in a scrap.

I suppose I do understand the hostel mentality. You find yourself in a strange city, with strange people all around. Then you go to a hostel and everyone there is just like you. Growing comfortable you make the hostel your home. Days turn to weeks, weeks to months and suddenly you’ve been living in a bunk bed for most of your adult life. It happens….

I didn’t stay in Edinburgh. My friends that did moved out of the hostel and into a tiny flat with about ten other people. They took turns sleeping in the two beds. In London we saw the city, never partaking of the twelve bottles of WKD for £2 offer.

Why do I hate hostels? I guess I dislike the fact that all that camaraderie makes you feel like you’re constantly walking into a private conversation you’ll never be privy to, because you know you’ll leave someday and they don’t.

That and they do love a good spot of passive aggressive note-making. Hostels are the breeding ground of the ‘Please don’ts’ and the ‘We would appreciate it ifs’ of this world.

People in San Diego don’t take the bus. Southern California drives everywhere, public transport is for the poor, the crazy and J1 students. If we didn’t make it to the beach we used the pool or went to another shopping mall. I spent too much money on things I thought I needed, which seems to be part of the objective of living in the southern part of this super-state.

Because I was 20 when I visited drinking was out of the question. Yes, no-one would know if I had a beer in our apartment but going out and sampling the nightlife was out of the question. So one night, towards the end of my trip, my friends took me to Tijuana, Mexico for a night of legal drinking and, of course, the chance for me to write a blog post a few years down the line about my experience in Tijuana.

The border

But I didn’t see Tijuana. Which is a problem when writing about a place. When we got off the tram that goes to the border we crossed a footbridge and got straight into a taxi. It was a warm night, the sort of night that you see on shows like The OC: dozens of too-young-to-drink college students and the ubiquitous J1 students crowded across the border, jumping into taxis that would take them to the many clubs in the town.

From the windows of the cab I saw little light. Tijuana is dark, there were few people on the streets and the street party I thought I’d see never appeared. The club we went to checked my passport (over 18s, I think) and stamped my hand. I paid $10 and everything else was free. It’s that cheap. The club had a cocktail bar, I was told to tip generously so my face would be recognised when I wanted service the next time; the Mexican men manning the bar were known to hold grudges. Fair enough, I’m sure their wages were next to nothing.

Drinks being free the night is sort of blurry. We hung around the back of the club, beside the volleyball court. Yes, the volleyball court. The club played commercial R’n'B, pop and rock. The U2 segment at the end, dedicated to the visiting Irish was cringe inducing.

A boy came up to my friend and asked her to dance. She declined. He then turned to me, his second choice. Shamelessly. It was sort of hilarious so I accepted and we danced. Then the music cut. It couldn’t have been the end; it wasn’t.

No, folks it was the weekly strip competition. I was rooted to the spot. Standing beside a boy I had just met, in a ply-board club south of the border I was about to witness a group of men and women compete to win a stripping competition. Sweet dreams, they are not made of these.

The men were a tame group, grinding, dancing and thrusting their crotches at the air. Any attempts on their part to introduce an element of actual sex into the proceedings – the removal of a belt, the unbuttoning of a fly – were quickly stopped by a man I presume owned the club. I sighed with relief, the strange boy and I would not have to endure a live sex show within seconds of meeting each other.

How wrong I was. The sign at the border should read “Welcome to TJ, Home of the Double Standard”.

The girls were allowed to unbutton everything. The owner helped. What began as a tame affair quickly became nasty and courted disgusting toward the finish line. Cheap, tawdry and everything that is wrong with how Tijuana operates as a border town, the show was base entertainment, free porn designed to stimulate the males in the audience and cheapen the females. The girl who took everything off won, of course. And I returned to my friend, leaving strange boy and his frat ilk on the dancefloor, transfixed.

The club ran until six or seven am and we left at dawn. Another taxi and a short walk through emigration, my eyeliner caked eyes told the officer everything he needed to know about my reason for being in TJ and my reason for leaving. At the border we went to McDonalds and breakfasted on pretty much everything on the McMenu. The people around us were clearly divided into two; the club crowd and the workers. Those beginning their day in search of the American Dream and those sampling it for a summer, dipping their toes into the SoCal lifestyle.

All in all I took about ten steps on Mexican soil. I’m intrigued by borders, the difference a line in the sand makes to the people and places on either side,  and though I’ve lived close to barbed wire fences in other places I’ve rarely been more affected than I was coming home that night. Tijuana:  it’s most defnitiely not for lovers.

Those writing about the wonders of discovering our fair isle in place of a fortnight sizzling on a beach rarely mention the expense of visiting anywhere in Ireland other than your local Aldi. Nor do they talk about the weather. Well, sometimes they joke about it; it’s a joke that wears thin five days into a seven day break that has seen nothing but rain and, no! it couldn’t be, the occasional snow storm.

In an effort to support our own and see some of this rather pretty country my Mum and I went on a wee staycation of our own. It’s not fair to bitch and moan when you haven’t had the experience yourself, so ‘stay’ we did.

Though I was gunning for a weekend in a spa, drowning in essential oils and piped musak my mother was all about taking a trip down memory lane and getting a bargain. She won.

My mum, my hastily adorned raincoat and me at Glencar

Over the May bank holiday we packed up her car and drove to Mullaghmore, Co. Sligo. My mother began the journey recounting my last visit there, as a child. A caravan of scuba divers  and their families from my home town had arranged a day out in Mullaghmore. While my father explored under the sea we played on the sandy beach, ate copious amounts of ice cream and ill-advised Turkish Delight. My neighbours were there and the photos from the day show us smiling, tanned and incredibly happy. If a little filthy.

This time there was only a little sun on the horizon as we drove west, and no scuba gear in the boot. We planned on relaxing, indulging in spa treatments and seeing what the Yeats’ Country had to offer us.

The first thing it had to offer us was lunch, and it was far from impressive. Yeats’ Tavern in Drumcliff is a roadside restaurant that benefits from its proximity to Drumcliff graveyard and a car park that accommodates bus tours. The food was awful. Really, truly, awful, over-priced rubbish. Don’t go there. Really. Don’t. It was a bad starter to a weekend I was determined would change my mind about holidaying at home.

Luckily the goats cheese tartlet of my nightmares was quickly forgotten as the views kicked in.

Is that Ben Bulben I see? Ooh, there’s the ocean. We’re in Yeat’s Country! What’s that mountain thing? Wow.

My mother soon tired of my Yeatsian trivia as Mullaghmore came into view. It’s a sleepy little town that no-one passes through on their way to anywhere else. The beach is wonderful, beautiful. It has dunes and nothing with more than two stories to spoil the view. There was no question that we would swim in the water but I like to think I remembered that other day when I was among a large group of children who had to be coaxed out of that same water.

Mullaghmore Beach © Ciara Norton

It is also the village that was home to Lord Mountbatten, it is the bay where he, his wife, his grandson and a local boy were killed when an IRA bomb aboard his boat exploded. Though we heard no-one speak of the atrocity it lingers in the air. Mountbatten’s home is visible from the dunes and though this is obviously a Catholic, nationalist, heartland it is also a town that saw four innocent people die needlessly, two young boys among them. 30 years on, Mullaghmore stands almost still in the shadow of its place in our history.

The people visiting Mullaghmore lined their campervans along the main, and only, street. People who travel in campervans are a wonder to me. I’m quite partial to the idea of buying one in my later years and seeing the world from my tiny kitchenette table as I make my way through the books I never got around to reading in my ill-spent youth. I think that’s what these people are doing. They’re travelling to enjoy the view. And they always seem to have more bicycles than members of their family. Odd, that.

Our hotel, one of two in the town, was basic but comfortable. Our room overlooked the sea, a fact that forgave the lack of fluffy robes and chocolates on the pillows. The fish we ate the first night in the hotel’s restaurant was close to perfect, an entirely unexpected bonus considering our nation’s sad reputaution of ignoring the good in its natural resources.

After dinner we retired to the hotel’s bar. It was a mix of holidaying families, groups of thirty-something friends away for the weekend and a smattering of locals who seem to divide their time between the bars of the two hotels. The two guys who sat at the bar on Saturday evening bemoaning their lot, discussing their friends in Australia and the lack of anything to do in Mullaghmore,  could be seen sitting outside the other hotel the next day. They were curing their hangovers with the hair of the dog that attacked them the night before.

Dunes, mountains © Ciara Norton

Spa treatments and seaweed baths (an experience I’m okay about reliving for, oh, the rest of my life) done Mother and I decided to explore further north. North of Mullaghmore is Bundoran. Yes, Bundoran.

I was optimistic. The Celtic Tiger was supposed to have touched everywhere, touched everyone. Though Bundoran has always been the preserve of the fish ‘n’ chip crowd perhaps some go-getter returned from the big schmoke to his motherland has opened a chic wee café, all flowery crockery and afternoon tea. My optimism was misplaced. (Yes, I am a rotten, snobbish townie with nowt but thoughts of how best to dress tonight’s salad on my mind) Yes, the beach is lovely. The waves look surf-friendly and the air is bracing. But the town itself is held together by grease and cigarette smoke.

Every other doorway is a bookies, a pub, an amusement arcade or a broken- down restaurant selling fried meat. Starving, we feasted on chips and chicken and sides of coleslaw bigger than our heads. They were edible, but edible was not what we were looking for. Disheartened we went back to Mullaghmore, ate a dessert of 99s and went for a nap. Because good weekends away should be brimming with naps.

Glencar Waterfall © Ciara Norton

On our way home we took a detour around Yeats Country. I can see what he was talking about. Cliched though it is this is unspoilt beauty. It’s land that surrounds and envelops you in its embrace. Everything about the rainy landscape made me want to retire somewhere near with a large window  and an empty notepad for my thoughts. Before we returned to the road proper we stopped at Glencar waterfall near Manorhamilton (in Leitrim, we spent the weekend hopping over county borders like it was going out of fashion) and then, of course, to Drumcliff cemetery and the final resting place of WB Yeats and his wife, George.

My staycation advice? Keep it short, don’t let your imagination run wild with thoughts of quaint ye olde tea shoppes and bring a raincoat and comfortable shoes. We’ve got some good country here, go see some of it.

We stayed at the Pier Head Hotel & Leisure Centre, Mullaghmore.