The EU did an about-face on its threat to invoke article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, which allows for special safeguard measures to be taken by either the UK or EU in exceptional circumstances. The EU had wanted to prevent a “backdoor” across the open Ireland / Northern Ireland for shipments of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to the UK.The European commission was supposed to publish...

I’ve been meaning to research the background on Ireland’s regions / provinces, not to be confused with the 32 counties (including the 6 in Northern Ireland). Most of the following content has come from various public domain sources such as Wikipedia and Irish websites, boiled down to the essentials. Ireland has historically been divided into four provinces: Connacht, Leinster, Munster...

I want to start off with some photos I took of Dublin at dusk, so this post will cover my day in reverse chronological order. View looking eastward from the Grattan Bridge: The Dublin Council’s modern building (allegedly built on an old Viking site): View of the Grattan Bridge from Orlando Quay Upper: I took the photos on the way back from a brief (<6,000) walk to the Smithfield neighborhood...