Having just returned from a whistlestop tour of Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, I can say with all my heart that we definitely live in the world's greatest nation. God bless America, land that I love. Our food is the best, our quality of life is the highest, and we drive on the right side of the road!
Not to mention the price of gas, which in the UK was as high as $7 per gallon (3.6 pounds, which at the current 2-to-1 exchange rate equates to more than $7 U.S.).
Nevertheless, it was an absolutely wonderful experience to travel through those European island nations, meeting their wonderful residents and seeing such historic and fascinating cities as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dublin and Belfast.
Edinburgh is gorgeous, with the 1,000-year-old castle set high up on a hill overlooking the bustling city of 540,000. Aberdeen is all gray granite buildings, with lots of gray roofs and very little color. We arrived on a cloudy, misty day and it was as if the city were invisible. Dublin is fantastic, with 1.4 million residents it is a big city but not too big to be intimidating. I loved the city's rich history, especially its literary history with four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Belfast, well, that's quite a story. The city centre is bustling and the residents are at peace now. But driving through the neighborhoods, you see that the Protestants and Catholics are still fiercely opposed to each other. There are incendiary murals painted everywhere, pledging to never surrender and to always remember the martyrs. As my Belfast-born friend said, when it's not boiling over, it's simmering. We may not be hearing much about Ulster in the news these days, but the deep-seated feelings are still very much there and will, sadly, boil over someday.