Greetings from Dublin, Ireland where Woods will play tonight in the Temple Bar district.

I’m here for 48 hours and then head to Toulouse, France for five nights.

I’m staying at a small reasonably-priced hotel in the Ballsbridge part of town. Immediately in front of the hotel is a bus stop. When I took a long, hot shower this morning, the plume of steam coming from the bathroom set off the fire alarm which prompted a call from the front desk asking if I was ok.

Whenever you enter this hotel, the person working the desk asks if you would like coffee or tea.

I had an excellent meal at the nearby pub Searsons of Baggot St. on Monday night. The shepherd’s pie and side salad combo cost 14 euros. The pie was served in a bowl and it was as good as I’ve ever had this dish. Pints of Guinness were five euros a pop.

Newspapers in print form are in great abundance and of high quality. Sports journalism is taken very seriously with much of it coming from reporters who put their copy under a picture of their face and let the words flow in long-form style.

I arrived Dublin the morning after the country’s Gaelic football championship was settled. Kerry beat Donegal at Dublin’s Croke Park. Fans from both sides wore their team’s jerseys as I saw them head for home at Heuston train station Monday morning.

The broadest of broadsheets The Irish Times devoted the first four full pages of its sports section to what’s called the “All-Ireland football final.” I don’t have a grasp of the sport’s scoring system or rules but I enjoyed reading the colorful, opinionated prose. The large, serious-toned tabloid Irish Independent went twelve pages strong on Kerry’s victory and assigned rating points to each participant in the contest. The coverage was Super Bowl equivalent in its magnitude.

The daily newspaper covering European horse racing The Racing Post is available at almost all the stands here. Flat and jumper coverage in the regular daily newspapers is prominent.

While getting to England from here is at least a boat or plane ride away, Ireland’s newspapers devote great space to Premier League soccer. Man U’s weekend loss to Leicester and Lampard’s score for Man City against his old mates were the big talk here to start the week.

Bicycling is a very popular way to get around and the numbers of pedal-pushers out there is way more than NYC. Still, it appears as if bike riders in Dublin are vying for much the same pavement as vehicles. There are some protected lanes and paths but there is a definite free-for-all feel to it.

Public transit is great. The buses are double-decked and go everywhere at all times except real late at night. The two above-ground light rail lines are efficient and clean. I’ve taken them both – in both directions – using what’s called a “Leap Visitor” card which gives you unlimited rides for 72 hours at a cost of 19.5 euros. I’m gonna run out of time to use a DART train but that system appears comprehensive and is covered by the Leap card.

The pub scene is pretty incredible although it’s better if you can find ones not frequented by the guidebook crowd. I ended up in one in Ballsbridge last night that was kinda sleepy but had been in business for 150 plus years. The bartender wore a tie and I really enjoyed eavesdropping on regular day conversations with his patrons.

-Francesa’s unwavering insistence that the NFL is up to no good has created inevitable collisions with the sports establishment. To Mike’s credit, he stood nearly alone on the day TMZ released the inside-the-elevator tape by saying there was no way the NFL hadn’t already learned of its contents. Francesa is now ridiculing the notion of an NFL-commissioned “independent” investigation headed up by former FBI director Robert Mueller. He’s dead-on correct in saying that a probe paid for by the entity that’s the subject of the investigation cannot produce an outcome that will be respected regardless of the stature of the guy heading it up. This assertion put Jim Nantz in an awkward spot on Mike’s regular Sunday football program a couple days ago – just before I left town. Nantz is one of the top two or three television voices of the NFL and his career is tied deeply to the League. He wants to talk about the games when he goes on Mike’s show. Instead on this most recent appearance, Mike pulled him into a debate on the validity of the Mueller probe and it got genuinely heated. Both sides ended up looking bad when it was over. Mike hung up on his longtime friend abruptly while Nantz sheepishly adhered to the NFL party line. All of this of course is a net positive for the listener given both Mike’s willingness to call ’em as he sees ’em – and the day-to-day excitement over what you may end up hearing on his program.