Nine things we didn't know about Ireland

1.   Irish men all have the same haircut. (Charlie has one now. This is him eating a yogurt at a bus station.)

2.   Glen Hansard is the only living Irish man with a beard.

3.  Full Irish Breakfast includes: eggs, sausage, ham/bacon, beans, toast as well as black and white pudding. Don't expect to eat the rest of the day. 

4.   Black pudding is a blood sausage made of pig fat, unspecified parts of the pig, oatmeal and flavorings. (This may be scary to Americans, but to a German it’s just Grützwurst.)

5.   Some Neolithic Irish people around 3700 BC, predating the pyramids of Gizeh, buried their dead in passage tombs covered by gigantic earthen mounds. (Did they have too much free time on their hands?)

6.   The Vikings were the first to settle Dublin. Dublin city government bulldozed what could have been the Pompeii of Viking times to build this:

7.   Irish is an interesting language. It takes two times longer to read written Irish than for a native to speak it.

8.   Elves do exist in Ireland. (We have no photographic proof of this, but we have totally seem them.)

9.   If you and your dog walk around a well the wrong way, you will be chased by its water until you and the water reach the ocean and you drown. (This is how the river Boyne came to be.)