Moving to Canada, Sun Chasing, and Small World Connections with Kevin of Walking Food Tours Dublin

EPISODE SUMMARY:

This week on Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go we meet Kevin Adams, co-owner and founder of Walking Food Tours in Dublin, Ireland. Kevin gives us a peek behind the Guinness Factory doors where he worked before he & his wife created a walking food tour company during the pandemic to support their community. We also chat about how we met (it's a wild one!), the importance of stories & appreciating history, & why the Irish put vinegar on chips (thick fries).

Travelling through Life: A Podcast on the Go is a fun & quirky show from Travel with TMc that delves into all things travel & adventures from the road, in the air, & in between here and there. Make sure to subscribe for weekly updates!

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MORE RESOURCES & LINK FROM TODAY’S EPISODE:

Kevin's Song Choice - Pump it Up (Endor)

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction to Kevin, Owner of Walking Food Tours Dublin
05:29 Starting a Tour Company During a Pandemic + The Guinness Factory Inside Scoop
10:59 Ontario Cider Trail + Irish Cider
14:47 First Trips & Childhood Experiences: Dingle, Spain, Greek Islands, & Moving to Canada
19:00 The Worst Engagement in the World + What it Inspired
24:42 Travel Traditions: Sun Chasers in the Canary Islands &  Cup Filling in Dingle
26:11 Language & Travel: Irish Education, The Unwritten Pub Rule, & 100,000 Welcomes
30:58 Dublin's Camden Street: One of the World's Coolest Neighbourhoods
31:39 Ireland's Changing Food Landscapes: Local Ingredients Paired with International Influences
34:22 Navigating Language Barriers as a Tour Guide + AI Predictions
38:53 The Impact of Technology on Travel: A Sense of Adventure & Getting Lost
41:18 Tourism Trends: The Desire for Hidden Gems
42:23 The Importance of Storytelling & Appreciating History
46:43 The Art of Sparking Connections
50:07 Irish Films
51:50  Untried Types of Travel: Luxury Hotels, Interrailing, Nile River Cruise
55:54 Canada's Disappearing Winter & Belgian Shopping Galleries
57:21 Why the Irish Put Vinegar on Chips (Fish & Chips)
58:40 Something You Do When Travelling that You Don't Do at Home
59:54 Travel Playlist: Kevin’s Choice
01:01:38 Speed Round: Dundalk, Mopeds, & Tayto Crisps, Get Your Guide
01:18:15 Until Next Time & Where to Find @WalkingFoodTours

Transcript

Tara (Travel With TMc) (00:02)
Welcome to Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go. I'm your host Tara and the founder of the blog Travel with TMc, which is where this adventure all began. Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go is a fun and quirky show that delves into everything travel, whether from the road, in the air, or in between here and there, as you probably heard in the last two episodes. On the podcast, I chat with vanlifers, those travelling with pets or their families.

digital nomads, travel industry professionals, and those who are just dipping their toes into exploring our big, beautiful world. My mission with the podcast is to demonstrate the relatability and feasibility of travel, as well as to inspire you to explore in new ways. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen so you receive notifications for new episodes. And please don't forget to leave a five-star review and a comment with who you'd like to hear in future episodes.

I'm also kind of toying with the idea of doing like shout outs in future episodes. ⁓ Whether it's something that you liked from the podcast, a travel question that you have, or even a travel story that you want to share that might relate to the theme of the episode that week. ⁓ If that's of interest to you, send me an email at Connect @ TravelwithTMc.com that's connect C O N N E C T at Travel with

TMc which is spelled T-M-C dot com. This week on Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go, I can't wait to introduce you to Kevin Adams. He's the co-owner and co-founder of Walking Food Tours in Dublin, Ireland, which is a place that's very near and dear to my heart. Kevin gives us a peek behind the scenes at the Guinness Factory where he worked before he and his wife created a walking food tour company during the pandemic to support their community.

We also chat about the completely wild and unbelievable circumstances and connections that occurred when Kevin and I met a couple of years ago. We talk about the importance of stories, appreciating history, and why the Irish put vinegar on chips, which for those who are from North America are thick fries, not potato chips. Thanks for listening and let's dive into this week's episode.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (02:35)
All right, welcome Kevin. I'm so excited to have you here. I can't wait to share people with people, first how we met, because it's epic, and second for them to hear more about your tour company. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (02:50)
It's an absolute privilege Tara, absolute privilege. Absolutely delighted to talk to you again virtually. A big huge hello to Canada and a special hello to everybody in Kitchener-Waterloo. And we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (02:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, definitely. So for those of you who hadn't seen my most recent trip to Ireland in December of 2023, I went on a food tour. Whoop, there goes my headphones. I went on a food tour and it turned out that Kevin was my guide, Within five minutes of us meeting, we learned that Kevin used to live in Kitchener, which is my hometown, and I used to live in Dublin, which is where Kevin is based, and it was just this like...

Small world, it was crazy. And we used to work at the same place, albeit at different times, but we both used to work at Sportsworld. Like how wild is that?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (03:43)
absolutely, absolutely I'm 40 years old at the moment, and one of the reasons I ventured into tourism and wanting to work with people and be face to face with people was, I never forget when I was 19, I first moved over to Kitchener-Waterloo and the welcoming of people and the complete, you know,

over 20 years ago, the difference in cultures between Ireland and Canada now, which is vastly changing in Ireland. But it was a completely amazing opportunity. It was a life-changing experience. And it was, you know, as amazing as Kitchener Waterloo was, it was the people, 100% people that just had a lasting influence on my own life. And it's it was incredible to meet yourself, actually. Deep down when I meet people from Canada, I'm like, you know, it's always where are you from?

Tara (Travel with TMc) (04:06)
Great.

Awesome.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (04:29)
And I'm hoping, I'm hoping in my heart people say Kitchener so I can talk to them about, you know, Higher Ground where I worked and Sportsworld and some of the bars, Paddy Flaherty's, Philthy McNasty's and you know, all of the great experiences that we had and shared. So to meet you that day was just like, you know what I mean? It was a fantastic experience. It's been a fantastic experience to stay in contact and to network ever since.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (04:30)
I do the same thing.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You got it?

Yes,

I agree. Yeah, it's I feel like it's kind of a kindred spirit moment as well, because we have so much in common with loving each other's countries, loving the tourism industry, just being like people, people in general and wanting to share that excitement and enthusiasm with other people. I think that we're very aligned that way, which is always wonderful to meet somebody.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (05:18)
Absolutely,

in the background we're actually currently building a new website and your picture, our picture at the end of the tour is going to feature on that website front page. So, you know.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (05:22)
Yeah.

Oh, yay.

I can't wait to see your new website. You'll have to tell us when it's released, and then we can share it with everybody. Yeah, so speaking of, actually, you've already told us a little bit about yourself, but why don't you introduce who you are, what you do, and where you're calling in from today,

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (05:35)
Awesome.

As gealge, gealge agus cíid míle fóilte agaturus seo le bíath a chí bíin is anam dom. My friends that is Irish which we must learn in school here. I just said hello everybody and welcome to Walking Food Tour. So myself and my wife Aoife, we started this company three years ago. Basically our aim was, and this was during Covid, to support local businesses, to tell the story of Dublin.

supporting local businesses through street food. So we basically didn't want to take the lobster and champagne approach. We wanted people to tagline "eat like a local". We wanted people to basically feel like in Dublin they could eat like a local. And we wanted to kind of move the model of your traditional, your traditional food tour where you're sitting down with lobster and champagne to get people up walking. My motto is lift your glasses, move your asses, do your talking while you're walking. So...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (06:33)
Mm-hmm.

I'm

sorry.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (06:38)
Basically you explore the city with five stops, breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, dessert. Taking in amazing street food, meeting amazing people, the heart and soul of the community while embracing the local culture. Where I'm calling from you right now, if I open my balcony window I can smell the hops being boiled and the barley being roasted from the Guinness Brewery. I can literally throw a stone from my house to the Guinness Brewery which is 56 acres.

and the size of 112 soccer pitches in and around. But I open my window I can smell them brewing 3.25 million pints of Guinness every day. And just if you're wondering how much Guinness we drink in Ireland every day, well, hopefully some of your help, anybody who's gonna visit us in Ireland, over a million pints a day of Guinness would be enjoyed here.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (07:26)
Wow.

And you have a unique perspective as well because you're giving us a lot of Guinness facts, but that's because you worked in tourism prior to opening up your own tour company, correct?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (07:38)
Yeah, absolutely. So actually myself, my wife, we met working together in Guinness. And that's where we met. So we were kind of the original Guinness love story or the second one after Arthur Guinness and Olivia. So yeah, we met working in Guinness. We had such a fabulous time. It was really amazing. Meet amazing people. Again, a great experience to meet people from all around the world. I had left that journey. I was working very much in the corporate world and during COVID-19 as a passion project on Saturdays and Sundays.

we decided that we were going to support local industry, local businesses. We were heavily affected by tourism, like the rest of the world, there was no visitors around. So anyway, this was a project for locals, get people out and learning with their own communities, support local businesses. And anyway, over about a year later, I left my day job. So this is what I do. And I consider myself the luckiest person in the world because I get to share this amazing story that Dublin must offer and meet amazing people every day. So.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (08:14)
Mm-hmm.

Which is incredible.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (08:34)
That's pretty much what we do. We do two tours. We do a street food tour around the traditional. I call it the old Dublin old town. It's the original part of the city called the liberties. It's a part of Dublin that was built outside the Viking city wall. Anyone who knows Dublin well will refer to it as the real Dublin, you know, the lawless Dublin, but in a good way. It was called The Liberties because in the old days there was an agreement made that people didn't have to pay tax or they didn't have to pay liberties. So it became known as The Liberties and it keeps.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (08:41)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (09:02)
that name and heritage today. So anyway, that's what we do most of the time. We also do a drinking tour, which I can't wait to have you on your next visit.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (09:11)
I cannot wait to go on this one. I'm thrilled. Honestly, for anybody who's going to Ireland, you have to go on the food tour for sure, but I'm bound and determined that I'm gonna be telling everybody about your drinks tour as well, because I know the passion and the enthusiasm you put into the first tour I took. So I can't wait for the drinks tour.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (09:29)
Oh, yeah, can't wait to host you. So basically on the drinks tour, we basically don't do your traditional pub crawl. We just go and have a drink. People can do that if they want, but we want to embrace people in Irish culture through drinking. So we go to four different stops, I call them as pubs. So one is Traditional Ireland, the home of traditional music, where people watch live music in this amazing bar from the 1850s, and they'll watch the true Celtic culture. And you know, it's such a local bar. They'll actually tell people to be quiet, ciúin in Irish, and everyone goes silent and...

They sing the Celtic songs from the heart. It's called Cobblestones, it's absolutely amazing. Then we, it's, and then we go on to a bar where we talk about everything hipster. So that's the craft beer revolutions, cocktails, whiskey. Then we move to a bar that opened up in the 1790s, It's an amazing bar, there's dogs walk around, there's a guy at the bar with his ??

Tara (Travel with TMc) (10:00)
I love Cobblestones. Great place. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (10:19)
the jazz and blues on Thursday nights and we talk about the story of cider. The story of cider is amazing in Ireland and it's not really told. And then we finish off by talking about Guinness outside of Guinness. We talk about Guinness outside the walls and the gates of the Guinness Storehouse. And we basically drink like a local and we talk about how Guinness is poured. And we answer the most popular question any visitor to Ireland asks. Why does Guinness taste so much better in Ireland than it does back home?

Tara (Travel with TMc) (10:47)
and they'll have to go on the tour to find out why.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (10:48)
You have to

go on the tour to find out, but I promise you it's not that we give you the bad stuff. And keep the good stuff for ourselves. Yes, absolutely. Yes, please. Come on, come on.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (10:54)
No.

I'm actually really interested to hear the cider portion of the tour because I don't think I mentioned this to you but during the pandemic or I guess coming out of the pandemic I wanted to start another project and so maybe a backstory to this is I didn't start drinking cider or really know what it was until I lived in Dublin. I remember it was like my first night out in a pub, went to go order something, I asked for a screwdriver and the bartender was like a what? And I was like a screwdriver. Like it's pretty standard you would know here.

he's like, what is that? And I was like, vodka orange. And then he was like, orange what and rhymed off like four different orange things. And I was like, oh my god, it has to be easier than this to order a drink in Ireland and I don't drink beer. So I was like, what else you got? And he said cider and since then I've been hooked. So during the pandemic, I started this Ontario Cider Tour. And for one summer, I went around to all the different cideries in a couple of different regions and have just been learning about the craft.

in the history locally but I really don't know much about it in Ireland so that'll be cool.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (12:01)
Cider

has an amazing cider. It's the second best selling cider in the world. Actually, it's an Irish cider. It's called Bulmers here. Yeah. Yeah, everywhere outside of Ireland it's called Magners. Somebody in the UK already had a drink registered as Bulmers Irish Cider. So they called it after its original founder outside of Ireland, Magners, after WT Magner.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (12:09)
Bulmers, yeah, but Magners elsewhere, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (12:25)
Bulmer's Amazing Cider is made with 17 different types of apples. So it doesn't just taste like one, it's stored in the cask for a year. It looks orange, but it doesn't have that super sweetness. I would certainly suggest that the last 10 years we can dedicate to the craft beer revolution and we can dedicate to the explosion of the gin market. I would strongly predict now that cider is going global. One thing I remember in my days working in the alcohol industry that was...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (12:34)
Great.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (12:53)
Cider is an equal drink in Ireland for sure for men and women. But I found, especially going back 15 years ago, I would meet men from places from really tough strong men and they would look at cider as a girls drink. In Ireland it's like no that's not the case. So you do see the cider companies, one of my favourites is called Dan Kelly. Even thinking the name Dan Kelly, trying to get the boys. They put it in a whiskey barrel for a full year.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (12:55)
Yep.

Right.

Okay. Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (13:21)
Point is, they're trying to punch it up.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (13:21)
Lovely.

Yeah, yeah, bringing a different market.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (13:25)
It's a really interesting part of cider was actually cider used to be looked upon as a cheaper drink in Ireland. I had a lower tax, but when the taxes went higher, what happened was they actually expected to be worried and their sales would reduce, but they actually grew.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (13:40)
Interesting. And here, sorry to interrupt you, here in Ontario, it's classified in terms of taxes as wine. So it's not, which is a completely different process for production and, you know, the agricultural side of things. So it's detrimental to the industry in Ontario, but it's interesting to see how those things are put together.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (14:01)
It doesn't shock me to hear you say that actually, because in most of the visitors that I would meet from Europe, I suppose really much with the exception of the UK, but certainly from places like Germany, from France, they consider it like wine style cider. Whereas to simplify it, in Ireland, we consider it beer style cider. So basically, you're saying alcohol content is a beer. It's kind of an easy to drink. On the two days a year we get sunshine, everybody's in a beer garden drinking cider.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (14:30)
Out in St. Stephen's Green you see no grass, you just see bodies everywhere. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (14:35)
You just see bottles of cider. But yeah,

it's certainly part of the culture here, particularly in summertime drinking. You know summer's here when people are putting on the sun cream and enjoying the cold cider.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (14:47)
Yeah, very neat. Well, I can't wait to check that out. That will be fantastic. I'm curious to dig into a little bit about your background travelling. You have travelled and lived around the world. Did you travel at all growing up? Do you have and local travel counts? Like, do you have any favourite memories or something that kind of started the travel bug for you?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (15:08)
You know what, that's a super question. And I suppose as children, as children growing up in Ireland, there wasn't huge amounts of disposable income. So as a kid, we would have gone, certainly to the west of Ireland was always, from my parents, my mother in particularly, Dingle was our childhood destination. And funny enough, that's actually where my wife grew up and where her family is from and where we got married. But Dingle is...

where my heart is. It's certainly my favourite vacation on the island of Ireland. It's the closest fishing village on the island, actually in Europe, to North America. It's a beautiful fishing village. In the background you've got amazing drives, you've got amazing walks. They film the latest Star Wars movies in parts of the area. So Dingle is such a special place. Galway, Donegal, what we call the Wild Atlantic Way basically. It's the rugged nature.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (16:03)
Yes.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (16:05)
But then once upon a time, my parents took me to Spain and I just couldn't get over a place that it was sunny all the time. I didn't know this existed. It was before the internet, you know? So we didn't know that you just go to a place and you'd spend a whole week or two weeks on your vacation in the pool. So after that, every time we were going to Dingle, I was crying like a baby because I wanted to go back to Spain. But I suppose that was, I always loved vacations. I always loved travelling.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (16:22)
Yeah.

Oh!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (16:34)
Dingle was for me even back then it you've seen a different part of Ireland It was a part of outside Dingle. They still speak Gaelic Irish and the girl talked It's it's like come back in time a hundred years and it's such it's such a special place And then it's a my big life-changing moment actually involved I finished school didn't really know what I was doing and I went to go and work and live in Canada I ended up in the in Kitchener-Waterloo and I just compared to Ireland back then, you know

Tara (Travel with TMc) (16:39)
Great.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (17:02)
Canada was so advanced. It was so ahead of the times. That was the time when the Blackberry phone was being made. I just watched the documentary recently. I was like really absolutely amazing. Brought back so many memories, even just nothing like some of the filming at the beginning in the backgrounds. But it was just amazing that the people, the experience, the friendship, it really stayed with me for life. So then I came back from Canada. I studied.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (17:09)
That's KW! Represent! Ah, I haven't seen it yet.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (17:30)
I studied here in Ireland Sport and Business, but literally the day I finished, the day I would finish my exams, that evening I'd be on a flight and I spent four summers working on the Greek islands. And that was another huge experience. I worked in cocktail bars and we were in a town called Hersonissos. It was where kind of 18 to 30s would go to party after exam parties and you'd bartend seven days a week. You'd sleep on the beach during the day.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (17:39)
amazing.

Oh, lovely.

I love it.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (17:57)
Again,

at a time when we weren't as European as we are today, so you'd meet people from parts of the world you'd never met before, you made new friends, you got to learn about different cultures, and it was just a great time. So literally, I was coming back to Ireland to study, but the moment that I could go, I was away. I just absolutely fell in love with it. Then I finished college and everybody was, everybody else in my course was putting the career hats on.

And I was like, I just had something in me that I just wanted to be with people. And an opportunity came up in Guinness and, you know, that, that came in and I spent 10 years working there. It started on the ground floor. I was done every job possible. You could do in Guinness from, you know, I was in the gift shop. I was the tour guide. I was a bartender. I was the trainer. I was the training manager. Then by the time I left, so that, that was a fantastic experience. Again, you're meeting people from all around the world and followed the corporate route then and lived for holidays. Like we, you know,

Tara (Travel with TMc) (18:24)
Pray.

for online.

Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (18:53)
travel

a lot in Europe. We got engaged in New York.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (18:57)
Oh, I think you might have told me that before. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (18:59)
Yeah, I'll share

this story, I'll remind you this story. So our engagement was the worst engagement, the worst proposal from a man in the history of the world. I was waiting for the last day of the trip to ask Aoife would she be interested in marrying me. But I wanted the trip to be about New York and put this in at the end because it was a special trip for us. So anyway, long story short, it's the last day. We were gonna go to Macy's, we were gonna go to Madison Square Gardens and we were gonna go to the park,

Tara (Travel with TMc) (19:05)
You did tell me, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (19:28)
And I was gonna propose. So anyway, we went to Madison Square Gardens I needed to find what you'd call a restroom So I went to find a restroom came back and Aoife was I met somebody selling tickets for a band The Cure So I bought them to our last night in New York. So let's we're going to The Cure. So I'm like great She doesn't know I'm planning to propose so I panic at the interval and it just comes out of my mouth Yeah, a variable diarrhea. Anyway, I the worst proposal in history

Tara (Travel with TMc) (19:41)
Yeah.

Oh no.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (19:57)
Thankfully she still said yes. Then we leave and it's kind of a little bit of a kind of like, you know, surely Kevin you've got something planned. And I'm like, I don't, but I'm gonna say, you know what we'll do? We'll go around New York, it's too late to go for restaurants. We will use our subway tickets and we'll go to different areas of New York and we will eat with the locals eat, as in street food, using the underground, have a wander around and have simple stuff like a New York cheesecake. We don't bake our cheesecakes in Ireland. Have a hot dog at Times Square and take a picture because you're a big tourist.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (20:22)
Yeah.

Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (20:27)
Go to Chinatown, you know, we don't have a real official Chinatown. That's an amazing experience for us. And anyway, we're flying home the next day and, you know, we're all engaged. And we're just talking about the trip. It's like, what will you cherish in this trip? Is it? I always wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty and, you know, the Empire State Building and the big skyscraper. Dublin's old and it's amazing, but we don't have the big, shiny, high buildings. And we both said, actually, I'm really happy that we spent that last day.

just going around the city and actually exploring, eating like a local and light bulb moment. What if we'd done that in Dublin one day and instead of the skyscrapers, we talk about the old buildings, like Ireland's got 30,000 kind of castles and old buildings. We've got, if I look at my window here, there's a tower that was built in 1757, look, we take that for granted. And we've got so much history and heritage as we walk the city walls, Medieval Dublin, the Vikings, the Celts, our journey and our evolution to independence.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (21:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (21:23)
We said, if we can incorporate these stories, and of course, Irish drink, through street food, and again, not lobster and champagne, and support local businesses, we really genuinely felt very strongly that would be something that would really interact with people. I'd also say one of the really interesting things about, there's two things I really remember about giving us confidence in these tours, and one of which was we had just started, and it was these two lovely ladies from North America.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (21:28)
Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (21:54)
The next week they came back on the same tour. We'd worked in Guinness for between the two of us almost 15 years and we'd never seen anything like that the same people return a week later. And that was one. There was another one that was a family and this gentleman, his father had passed away. So his father had come from Ireland and always wanted to go to Dublin and Ireland and learn about the family history. So we were going to...

talking about street food, goujons, cod, and Guinness Beer batter, but I was talking to him and saying but the old fish from Ireland was actually ray and that's what his father would have had as fish and chips and the guys in the fish and chips shop wrapped it up in the newspaper the way it was in the old days and he got to eat fish and chips the way his father would have done that meant more to this man than you know going to the most fancy restaurant on top of a skyscraper or anywhere in the world that was the meal for him and that was the human connection that we kind of...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (22:33)
Yeah.

for sure.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (22:50)
Dublin just is such an amazing story to tell. We just like to bring people a little bit away from the tourist trail and kind of share it, go in depth to the amazing stories and highlights of the city. So that's kind of where it all comes from.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (22:53)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Well, you do it well. I mean, having lived in the city and returned not quite a dozen times yet, but like I learned so many new things on that tour as well, both about the city and the food. And I know that there's always more to learn. But it really was great to see a different part of the city and to try foods that I hadn't had there and to learn about other local businesses that I wasn't aware of it. Yeah.

I love the story of where that came from and where it's led you today and I'm really excited to see where things go next for you guys. I think it's going to be great.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (23:38)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. So in terms of just to finish your last question, travelling, anytime I get a chance, we travel. I'm one of these people that I'm always looking up. I'm always looking up flights to see what's available, where should I go, particularly to the sun, mind you. We're really interesting in Ireland, actually. We're actually getting climate tourism. People are coming to Ireland to get away from the sun. I'm the other way around. Absolutely, yeah, that's the big one now, especially in summer months.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (23:44)
Yeah.

Yeah

Oh, yes.

So interesting.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (24:09)
People massively, Central Europe,

Tara (Travel with TMc) (24:09)
The Spaniards will be coming to you guys now because they've got all the fires and everything. Wow.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (24:14)
Italy, North America as well, absolutely. So traditionally, in Celsius, the hottest we've had in Dublin ever is 29 degrees Celsius. So that's the hottest ever. That's when we were closing down, we're too hot. So for people coming from extreme heat, they love to come down to cool down and go to the green. You know, you'd be definitely 100% guaranteed to be going to the water here. You'll cool down.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (24:17)
Yeah.

Right.

For sure.

Yeah,

so true. Oh my goodness. Well, so you might have answered my next question that I was going to ask if you and Aoife had any travel traditions, but it sounds like sun might be a big part of those traditions.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (24:51)
That's the big one. Well, I suppose because we got engaged in New York, that's always a big part of our heart. Because we got married in Dingle, we always make sure we visit Dingle at least once a year. Over the last number of years, because of the nature of work, we're working in tourism and hospitality. So it's the quiet times for us. We tend to close in the first two weeks of January. We tend to get on an airplane. So our latest tradition has been, since we started Walking Food Tours

Tara (Travel with TMc) (25:03)
Great.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (25:18)
the Canary Islands, the south of Tenerife, is the place on planet Earth where the weather changes least between summer and winter. So if you make it into Ireland in January and you wanna warm up a little bit, there's a, south of Tenerife is absolutely fantastic. It's a, they call it the land of eternal spring. So that's become our new tradition. That's become our new tradition. But it's, but we like to travel a lot. We like to travel a lot.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (25:39)
Good to know.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (25:49)
We've been fortunate in terms of travelling across the Atlantic. In Ireland we're really, really lucky the fact that Dublin is a hub for an airport. We live a 15 minute drive from the airport and we have an airline called Ryanair which are budget airlines. You can get a two hour flight to Italy, north of Spain very easily.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (25:59)
Right.

Hmm. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely miss living in Europe for things like Ryanair. Speaking of, I guess, travel in Europe a little bit, I don't know if you know this, but my first love before travel was words. My background.

and education is in linguistics and in French and Spanish and Italian. And I know that in Ireland, you've already mentioned that Irish, Gaelic, is learned in schools, and you introduced yourself in Irish. I was wondering what's your relationship as an adult to the language and how often do you use it? I know you used it a bit on the tour, but what is, what's your interaction with the language?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (26:49)
That's such a wonderful

question. And I think people were so proud of our language. Basically, at the time where I would have grown up, you had no choice in school. So every person had to study English, Irish, and maths. Irish being Gaelic, okay? You had no choice. Secondary school, and then from five until 18. So in secondary school, you would have no choice. English, Irish, maths, and then you would choose four other subjects. So you pick seven at least. Anyway, long story short,

Tara (Travel with TMc) (27:17)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (27:20)
So with Henry 18 you're amazing at Gaelic, you can speak Gaelic almost as well as English, it's a great second language. And by the time you're 30, unless you teach, unless you practice it, or you live in the Gaeltacht in Ireland which is 3% of the island, where people still speak Gaelic as the number one language, you forget most of it. You'll pick up words, today our government, the country does a huge pride in trying to get...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (27:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (27:44)
people speak in Gaelic every day. Our signposts are in Gaelic and English. We have television programs, radio programs in Gaelic. The Cobblestones bar I mentioned does Gaelic speaking nights. Not so people feel unwelcome, it's so people feel the old ways. And one of my favourite things about Gaelic, it's a beautiful language. We say Cid mí le Fáilte at 100,000 welcomes. It's not just welcome. It's a storytelling language. So when that transcribes to English, the words are very colourful and descriptive and

Tara (Travel with TMc) (27:48)
Right?

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay.

Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (28:13)
We talk a lot.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (28:15)
I love it, but the chat is a thing there though, and it's such a lovely part of the culture, in my opinion. Like, after I moved back from Ireland, I moved to Toronto, and I found Toronto so isolating, even as somebody who's from Canada, because people don't chat to each other like you guys do. It's such a lovely part of Ireland, I don't know.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (28:34)
One of the things I love is the unwritten pub rule. The unwritten pub rule. Not as much in the city centre because it's so kind of cosmopolitan. But certainly when you get out of that main city centre and you're in a local, my local up the road here, there's an unwritten rule. You sit at the bar and you'll speak to the people around you and the bar staff and everybody's together. And then if you want to be left alone and play with your phone or look at your points, you just sit in the lounge at the back. The bar is a place where people come together.

Dublin was last year voted the second safest city in the world for solo female travellers. So it's a very safe city, it's a very polite city, very friendly city. Sometimes I see people walking around the city and they've got a map or a phone and they look completely lost. You know they're lost. And you go up and you ask them, hey, how're ya doing guys? Can I give you any help here? And sometimes they just, look at ya strange.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (29:00)
Yeah.

Oh, I did not know that.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (29:28)
You don't realize that's just an everyday occurrence here. I think Irish people are brought up with a mentality that throughout our history, there was a lot of immigration. And people were forced to emigrate for better life and for work and for economic reasons. So people are brought up with the fact that always consider it an honour. I hate using the word tourist, to be honest with you. I call people visitors and it's an honour that people come to visit and learn a bit of culture and learn a bit of history. So...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (29:32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (29:56)
I think within Ireland there's this, we call it the Cead Míle Fáilte, the 100,000 welcomes, but there's a huge desire to help people and, you know, I think everybody feels a great pride in people leaving Ireland and spending a great time and the people are very friendly and very hospitable and that's a huge part of it. You know, that goes back to the way I was brought up with my parents and grandparents and it's certainly part of the culture. The area where I live in around here, a lot of people don't close the front doors.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (30:00)
Yeah.

Great.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (30:26)
And there's an unwritten rule that you always have to help, you know, you always help each other out.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (30:30)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's something that's lost in bigger places like Toronto, where it's kind of an every person for themselves mentality. Whereas in Ireland, at least in my experience, it has felt a bit more as you described people helping each other. Are you don't say that?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (30:44)
I think we're losing it. I think we are losing it to a degree, you know, and there's,

particularly in the big cities, I think you go to the countryside and everything's slower and everybody's really warm and it's a huge, you know, it's a huge part of the culture. I just, something just came into my head there. I think the last time we were speaking, we mentioned there was a bar called Whelans, Whelans where P.S. I Love You was filmed on Camden Street.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (30:59)
Yeah.

God, don't get me started. Oh!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (31:12)
I just remember

Tara (Travel with TMc) (31:12)
Right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (31:12)
we mentioned Whelans I just wanted to point out something on... like two days ago there was a report made on the coolest neighborhoods in the world for eating and number 22 number 22 it's in the whole world and you know what I walked down like two days ago and I was kind of just looking at it wow it's so international it's our unofficial food quarter

Tara (Travel with TMc) (31:21)
Camden Street. Yes, I saw that! I saw, in the world! Yeah!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (31:39)
So a great thing for any listeners here, I would have grown up as a kid, Irish food was a necessity. It was like, you're Irish. You didn't even have a luxury. You didn't even have entertainment. And we joined the European Union in 1978. We're a massive modern European Union success story. And a huge amount of people, for the first time in Irish history, migrated to Ireland. Like yourself as well. And you know what they did? They made Ireland better. They made our food better. We're still using delicious local ingredients. We're 800% self-sufficient.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (31:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Fuel!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (32:08)
beef, some of the best seafood in the world. You know, we have 5,000 recipes plus for potato. But now we've got a plot, yeah we do, true story. I'm not gonna list them all. But now we've got this twist, just sprinkle of it, an international presence and learning. You know, even economic reasons like in the global recession in 2007, the financial crisis, our chefs then who had learned these new skills had to travel again to work.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (32:09)
Yep.

Hahaha!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (32:34)
And it came back and now is the exciting time in Dublin, our food revolution. And it's taken place all over Ireland, but particularly Camden Street is a great example. And it's just, it's such an amazing place. It's all the different cuisines of the world blended together.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (32:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I've even noticed a huge difference from like I lived there 2012 to 2013 and when from when I lived there to going back in the last, let's say three years post pandemic or however many years we are to now. I've noticed a huge difference in, in the food there, both in, I think the pride that Irish people are taking in local

whatever like whether it's seaweed products or seafood or something else or maybe I'm just hearing about it more now as well but also in terms of like the different restaurants like the small independent ones that's one of the best things I think about Dublin too is you don't have all the chains like yes there are some there but I don't know it's there's a different vibe in the food scene now and in Dublin and in Ireland I think.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (33:33)
It's so

exciting. Whether you're going for traditional Irish, one of my favourite shops, Gallaghers featuring on Phil Rosenthal called Somebody Feed Phil, they make a dinner that's called a Boxty. It's a pancake, like a crèpe style, but it's a dinner, it's a savory, not a sweet, and they wrap it up in like meat or fish, and it's like a pancake made out of potatoes. So that's your traditional. And then you go down the road, and you have an unofficial Korean town, an unofficial Chinatown.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (33:39)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (34:01)
One of

my favourite cool places in Dublin, there's this Asian goods store. You go out the back of it and it's called KFC - Korean Fried Chicken. And there's not proper seats, they're just benches you just sit on. And you just go in there to eat chicken and it's Korean style chicken. It's showing the diversity that we have now in Dublin with food and it's such an exciting time.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (34:13)
Yeah!

Right.

Yeah, very cool. I want to circle back to your tours for a second in the language thing and then we'll go on to a couple other things. But I was wondering with regards to like you have visitors I'm assuming mainly from North America but also from other countries, no?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (34:36)
Oh yeah, absolutely. If I was to try this, I suppose North America, US and Canada, big. Especially now coming this time of the year. Not as much in the winter. They tend to visit now right through the summer season till Halloween. And then we've got a huge amount of Germans. Germans, for whatever reason, Germans love coming to Ireland and learning culture and eating and drinking. So we love the German visitors. It's been such a huge connection.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (34:43)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (35:03)
The UK are the people who obviously visit Ireland the most. They're our neighbours. So we get a lot of visitors from the UK. But we also have visitors from... Huge amount of visitors coming from Italy, Spain, France, South Africa, Netherlands, Austria. To name but a few. As far away as South America. But a huge amount of people from North America and Germany in particular. Language-wise, can they understand my accent? No!

Tara (Travel with TMc) (35:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, like how do you navigate?

I was gonna ask like, how do you navigate language barriers for your visitors being that you're a tour guide and the whole point is to like, you know, have people understand how cool a place that you're in. How does that work? Which is fabulous.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (35:39)
Well, first of all, I have to navigate my accent.

OK, very good question, actually. You know what, truth be told, most of the visitors who are non-Native English speakers, they come on a tour like ours because they want to immerse in the culture and they want to practice English. I would have studied French and German in school. It wouldn't be the best in the world.

but they don't even let you practice the language because they want to speak the language, they want to learn, they want it as an educational process. But we are, but it's a really interesting conversation. I was having one of my colleagues, we were at a presentation about AI, what's coming. And in two years time, it's reckoned that I can have anybody in front of me and they'll have a set of earplugs to their phone and it will be instantly translated to the language that they speak with my accent and the Irish version of it.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (36:14)
Oh?

That's wild to me. Like again, coming from the linguistics background because language is so much more than like a word for a word.

it doesn't work that way. There's nuance, there's history, there's regional differences, there's so much, this is like for a whole other podcast, but there's so much behind the one. So it's like, how do you, as a human translating, as a human who translates instantaneously, I think that's one of the hardest jobs possible because you have to be not just bilingual, but bicultural, I think, in order to understand what you are.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (37:03)
I personally don't think it's 100% possible at all. That's just coming from a Gaelic background. We tell stories and you dissect the stories and you say it back. But you know what, sometimes that's the beauty of it. The more we differentiate from the language, we've got simple sayings in Ireland. What's the craic or What's the craic, Jack? How are you? How's things? Have you any news? That's what that means, what's the craic? If you say that to somebody, it's like, no, sorry, I don't have any drugs.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (37:06)
Yeah.

Great.

Right, yer man, yer one, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (37:32)
It's like it's a different meaning for crack. What's the crack Jack and you know, like so sometimes we have a bit of banter with people Like we know three words for everybody to learn an island "póg mo thóin" means kiss my ass. It's a but people buzz off that they get a good Get a bit of a kick out of that as well. It was that's you know, that's that that's the local language Like there's some words that are really unique to Dublin and they want to good. It's good fun You know "to leg it" means to run, you know

Tara (Travel with TMc) (37:33)
Yeah!

Yeah.

Right, yeah!

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (38:03)
in the inner city so there's great craic you can have with people and great fun and games you can have. But it's not an issue we have. One of the other reasons it's not an issue we have is it's clearly written on a description. Tours are in English if you can understand us. But my wife Aoife does speak fluent French. But our tours are not your typical food tour that you might get away with a second language that you just go in and eat and you know you're breaking bread which is fantastic.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (38:09)
Yeah.

Oh

Mm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (38:32)
our church are really focused on storytelling. So I

will say we're a storytelling, assisted by embracing the culture through food, as opposed to being a food tour where you go from restaurant to restaurant and you just, you know, you just eat. You know, it's so much more than just this. It's feeling like a local and what brings us all together is food.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (38:40)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So speaking of AI and tech then, I'm curious to know, both you and I have travelled before and lived in other places before the internet was like a really central part to that experience. Like when I moved to Dublin, Instagram wasn't really a thing, blogs were like in their birth kind of stages. When you were in Kitchener, that would have been a different story too. How has tech both... Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (39:19)
I had a map, I had an old map, I had a map. I had a map,

I had a map. I'll never forget a couple of things. Like my first day in Kitchener, you guys had something that seemed really normal, but we didn't have this on the whole island of Ireland. At the bus stops was an electric sign that said how long it was gonna be to the next bus. This for me, coming to Kitchener from Ireland was like saying...

we've just invented a new spaceship that's going to the moon. It was just incredible. So, you know, that's the beauty. We didn't have a smoking ban in Ireland. There was one in Canada. It was amazing. We didn't have the traditional tipping culture. So, you know, and you don't get this really now. So I suppose there's a sense of adventure in this and there's a sense of being lost. But an old,

Tara (Travel with TMc) (39:55)
Great.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (40:15)
manager of mine, the guy who used to run the Guinness Storehouse, I remember him saying something that stuck with me for life. He's like, sometimes being a visitor to another country is a lonely experience. Because you might, you know, there might be language, culture barriers, people want to explore, they want to learn. Sometimes it can really, really make someone's trip or, you know, somebody embraces them. And that's what I love about Canada, people are so open.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (40:25)
Mm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (40:38)
I've met such amazing people, but now it's a completely different. I spend a lot of time trying to give directions at the end of the tour. And the age group is hilarious. Like you've got a couple of people and they're my age and older. And they're so grateful. And we go to the map, we write stuff down and whatever it may be. And we point. And then you've got the teenagers. You know, it's like, don't worry about it. I'll just check on my phone.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (40:45)
We're-

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (41:01)
I'm figuring it out ourselves. So it's definitely easier. There is something nice about being lost in translation. There really is. There's something, but I always do feel that there is something new. There's new things about travel I'm noticing. And one is that people want to find a hidden gem that the locals go and boast about.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (41:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, which is ironic then it makes the whole scenario completely ironic.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (41:28)
Massively. It's one of the things of my friends my Irish friends who travel to like say Italy for example Everybody talks about the little cafe they found down the side streets Just all the Italians are eating and they can't understand the menu. It's the most amazing. So Dublin has a part of that as well It's like yeah, where's the hidden cool fun friendly place You meeting your friend and I do think that the biggest romance we still have in Dublin is you can you can start your day

Tara (Travel with TMc) (41:34)
Great.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (41:59)
you can make new friends very easily. I think that's not always possible to do everywhere in the world. Take that for granted sometimes. But to answer your question, yeah, it's a completely different world. There's goods and the bads. I love the lost feeling, but on the other side, people know more than ever. So when people arrive, they may have more information than ever before. So I think as guides, we have to have new stories. We have to...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (42:02)
So true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (42:27)
fun, we have to keep moving our story on and we have to create new celebrations and new things to brag about for people when they come home. You know, so for example, you know, somebody visits Ireland after listening to your podcasts and they'll have lots of information and lots of stories. So they have a one-up on somebody who is a visitor who doesn't listen to your podcast. And they certainly have a one-up on somebody who visited Ireland 10 years ago, or 20 years ago.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (42:36)
That's so interesting, I've never thought of that.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (42:55)
You know, like when I went to Canada, we didn't have Google. There was no things to do. One time I went out to, I wrote it down, the name. I'm, excuse me if I pronounce this wrong, right? But this is a great example of not knowing tourism. I went out on a full day trip to West Montrose Covered Bridge, is that correct, then? So this, this was amazing. It's a covered bridge, it's from the pictures. It looks like a...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (43:16)
Yes! The West Montrose! Yeah! The kissing bridge!

Hahaha!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (43:23)
It looks like the bridge in Bridges of Madison Square County, the movie. It looks exactly like that. Built in the 1880s, right? And a huge part of culture, but it is the beauty of Dublin. I go out my house and I cross the river, which is in front of my house, I cross a bridge, it's older. So I didn't necessarily need to go on a full day trip. I didn't know. And that was a light bulb moment for me to actually realise how lucky we are to have all this history on our doorstep. Like the oldest pub in Dublin opened in 1198.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (43:37)
Yeah, oh I know.

Mmm.

Yeah, Brazen Head, no? Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (43:50)
Put that, put that, Brazen Head, yeah, Brazen Head very great

memory. But that's just such an amazing thing to some people. And then you've got the other side of this, the kids, the kids in Ireland, the youngsters, we have this in our doorstep. You know where they want to go? They want to go to Toronto. They want to go to the bright lights. They want to go to Vancouver. They want to go to the bright lights. They'll come back to the other stuff, but you know, we have all this, it's part of the culture, and you know, there's another side of it as well. So what's, what's...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (44:06)
Right? Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (44:20)
You know, what's the saying that I love? There's a shop down the road from me that says, one person's junk is another person's treasure. This little cool shop sells all these old artifacts. Most people in the countryside have up in their attic, it's considered junk. I had a group on my tour a couple of months ago and I was telling them about these shops. They were really intrigued by them, which I think is cool, you know, they wanted to get something. Anyway, they wrote to me later on, said that the local museum wanted to buy it off them. It was gonna be the oldest thing in their neighborhood.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (44:35)
Right.

Oh.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (44:50)
One person's junk is another person's treasure. That street is Francis Street, by the way. If you're at Francis Street, it's the old streets where the Guinness Iveagh Markets were and the Tivoli Theatre, right in the centre of the liberties. It's an old street. They have these amazing antique shops and they sell things.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (44:52)
Yeah, oh, 100%.

That's where

the Christmas market was that we passed by, no? At the Iveagh Markets?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (45:09)
No close, oh sorry, close by, very close to that area, very close to that area. But yeah, I suppose the old Dublin, the heart of the city, you know, that's just one of the cool things that people can, you know, kind of take it for granted, but people might be visiting from another part of the world and it's just like incredible, you know. The wall that surrounded Dublin, you know, the old Viking medieval wall, you know, it's just, it's a gravel from that wall. It's almost a thousand years old.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (45:12)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is really mind-blowing when you think about it. I don't think we have any concept of age in North America because buildings that are 50 years old get torn down because they're old to put something else up. You know, it's, sometimes I wonder if it's lost on us when we go travel other places. And on the other side, I think that it hits us more because it's so much older than we can fathom here. Like it's got both impacts, I think.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (45:52)
I know it's...

Absolutely. My fondest memories of Canada are looking at the bright lights of Toronto at night time. I've never seen it like this before in my life. Even something that's maybe as simple as, maybe it's called something else, it might not still be there, but Canada's Parliament Wonderland. You know? It's like we don't have anything like that here. That's a child's dream. I suppose that's the beauty of travelling. That's something we do like to share, but I definitely do...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (46:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (46:31)
really stand by the people who are visiting that their travelling can be this kind of, it can also, it's amazing but it can be lonely and so important to make new friends. That's what we love to do on our tours actually. We meet a lot of solo people and we buddy them together. So we purposely, it's good fun meeting your friend, why not? Why not? Why not? It's lovely. My favourite tours actually are groups of people and that they're meeting and then it's, the tour's ending and you can...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (46:43)
Yeah.

which is great for people to hear. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (47:01)
They're going for a pint or they're going for coffee as a group together or they're arranging to meet up that evening to go a little bit of Irish dancing or whatever it may be. That's a lovely part of it. It is amazing to hear last week actually, I'll just tell you a little bit about this for a second. This was a singles trip to Ireland. So it was like basically 40 people and it would be a really big group for us, two guys. But anyway, basically it was the first day in Ireland, they were going to be on this trip.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (47:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (47:29)
The idea is, you know, we're going to be locals, but they're going to interact together. So, you know, what's happening here? Basically, what we've done in the future was we blew a whistle every 10, 15 minutes. So you had to have a new food buddy. So you were basically forced to talk to a new person and build a relationship. So you're going for a date, basically, with food. And it's a nice break or through the food. And it was just amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing to see how food can do that as well. And it's. So that that.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (47:42)
Yes.

I love it.

Yeah, was this something

that you guys arranged or was it a tour that teamed up with you guys?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (47:54)
No, this is actually

a tour company. It's an amazing, amazing tour company. And they do these trips all over the world, but for St. Patrick's Day, it's Dublin. So they come over for a full week, and they basically go on events together and go drinking together for a week. And see what happens. It's like, and then this tour's a bit different. We said instead of just finishing the food tour, which we normally do.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (48:10)
I love it. You'll have to...

Hehehehehehe!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (48:20)
was it, let's go to the pub and get some alcohol into this just to kind of get it going. And the atmosphere was just, just incredible, just absolutely incredible. So that's something we're definitely gonna look at doing for Valentine's, these type of, you know, speed date. And again, not to be too heavy on it, someone just wants to go talk to your friend or, you know, as a way to interact.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (48:25)
This is a reality TV show in the making.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

This is a conversation I've been having a lot lately because as somebody who's in their 30s and single, and it's harder to meet people now and as somebody who's self-employed. I don't have the work built in, I no longer have the sports or the music built in to meet people and whether it's a partner or new friends.

events like this or tours like this sound absolutely fantastic. It's, it's a common conversation I have with other people who are 30, 40 and single as well. And that's really cool. You guys are doing that.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (49:08)
I was having a conversation with the guys last week actually as well. I'm so lucky I just missed the app thing. I just missed the app thing. I would have been awful at it. I wouldn't be awful. I was old school. You know, you see someone in a bar, you go up to them and you say, talk to you, go all in and get like, you're beautiful or whatever it is. But very cheesy. I think if young people done that to another young person these days, they'd probably run away from them. It's what happened to chivalry

Tara (Travel with TMc) (49:15)
Oh, yeah, you're not.

Yeah!

Yeah, it's interesting. When I was there, so I have my Claddagh from, I got it in Galway when I was 14 when I got this. And I remember being in pubs in Dublin and the guys would take a little look at my hand and they go, oh, okay. They'd know which way to maybe see the conversation. Whereas here, like, yeah, it's just, it's an interesting landscape.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (49:41)
Ah, very good!

I love the rings, I love the rings, it's a huge tradition. It's one of my most popular questions from the ladies at the end of the tour is actually, where do you get a Claddagh ring? And we've got, there was a movie released on Netflix this week actually, I'll just mention it. Yeah, did you see this? I apologize to anyone who watches this movie and I want you to know it does not represent Ireland, but I had to watch it when it came out. For the simple reason, I'm gonna get asked if it works for me.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (50:06)
No way! Yeah.

Oh, don't even tell me. Is this the Lindsay Lohan one? Uh, no.

for sure.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (50:25)
And the filming is absolutely beautiful in Glendalough. It's a lot of it. At the Guinness Lake, it's called. It's fantastic. It's the area where they make the television show Vikings. And then all of a sudden they turn around the corner and they're at the Cliffs of Moher. So that doesn't happen. That's on a completely different side of the country, just so everybody knows. But I think it was called Irish Wish or something like that. Yeah, one of the... Yeah, it made me cringe. It made me cringe so much. But actually speaking of another Irish movie, here's a recommendation for your listeners.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (50:28)
Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know if I can...

Yeah. Oh!

Yeah!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (50:55)
Cillian Murphy has just won the Oscar for Best Actor in Oppenheimer. Amazing film. There's a movie he made that made him a star here in Ireland. It gave him the platform to build his career. It's called The Wind That Shakes The Barley. The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Fantastic movie. Fantastic film. Low-budget indie film. It's absolutely fantastic. Fantastic film. That's what made him a star. You can see it in him there and then. You can see watching that movie he's gonna be a star.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (50:57)
Yes! Yeah.

Okay, my best friend mentioned this the last time I was there. Yeah.

Cool, I'll add that in the show notes for people. That's great.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (51:26)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, The Wind That Shakes The Barley. It's unheard of outside of Ireland. It's a fantastic movie. Can't recommend it enough. Hidden Gem.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (51:33)
Awesome. There we go. That's amazing. Okay, I'm wondering if, like you've travelled in a lot of different ways, you've lived abroad, is there a type of travel that you haven't tried yet that you are interested in trying?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (51:50)
Wow. Well, to answer that question, I think if I tell you a little bit about my honeymoon, this will kind of show you where my life's going. So, the honeymoon was, we went to Thailand, Southeast Asia, and Aoife got to pick everything with the wedding. That was my deal, right? But I get to choose 100% of honeymoon, right? All me. All wedding was Aoife, all honeymoon. And I advise this to any couple. Normally, the ladies are more of it. The wedding, honeymoon for the guys, right? Biggest advice ever. Anyway, long story short.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (51:57)
Yeah!

Oh!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (52:21)
And I wanted I never done the backpacking experience And then I know if honeymoon is going to want the fancy hotel experience. So basically we'd almost three days Every three days we'd move so backpacking experience three days. Then we go to a nice hotel Then there's a backpacking experience then a nice hotel, right? 100 listen to me now ladies and gentlemen fancy hotel on honeymoon all the way you see these beautiful beach shops, so you see these

Tara (Travel with TMc) (52:24)
Okay.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (52:46)
these beautiful beach shots and the pictures and it's like go travelling here it looks amazing right they don't show you inside them for a reason

Tara (Travel with TMc) (52:54)
Oh

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (52:56)
Where is the bathroom and nothing? That's that's all I'm saying. That's the end of the thing. We're gonna say on that So what do the showers look like? So yeah all the way all the way all the way All the way to fancy hotel. So I suppose that that's something I didn't do I had a chat with one of my friends recently actually just only he's just back from a trip to Egypt and He don't know what it ignited under done like a cruise in the River Nile, but there's no cabins Everybody just sits and sleeps and sleeping bags on the top of the ship

Tara (Travel with TMc) (53:12)
beautiful.

Okay.

Wow.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (53:21)
And you spend the whole night together and you're going down the Nile and you've got all the culture and history. That's something that would really appeal to me in the future for sure. I am a sucker for the sun. I do like a nice beach. I suppose it's go back to the time I used to work in Greece. I just love the food, I love the lifestyle. But that's something in mind. Iceland is certainly on my list.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (53:28)
Cool.

Yeah.

Ooh, I have to say, I went to Iceland in 2017. I had zero interest in going. My partner at the time was like, no, we're going. It is one of the places that has blown my mind the most. And this is coming from somebody who loves the outdoors, but I won't plan a trip around it. Iceland is, it's another planet. If and when you get the chance, go, and then double the amount of time that you think you're gonna spend there. It's incredible.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (54:15)
Yeah, that's massive on my list. I never went interrailing properly. We've done the big trips like Oktoberfest in Germany and we've done the major European cities and so on. But I, oh sorry, interrailing friends, this is amazing. So mainland Europe is all connected by trains. That's all you need to know. So there's two ways of doing Europe. You can fly from city to city or you can get it like three month long, one month long, two week long.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (54:19)
Okay.

Yeah, can you explain what interrailing is for people? Not everybody, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (54:44)
Unlimited travel tickets on the trains to go around Europe and you can go from city to city So you can see all the capital cities seaside villages mountains whatever may be I particularly parts of Europe that don't get explored as much Eastern Europe But like one of my favourite cities in the world is a Budapest I just fell in love with Budapest in the winter time to get these amazing buildings amazing culture Look at these amazing outdoor thermal spring baths. It's like 38 degrees Celsius in the snow

Tara (Travel with TMc) (54:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

rate.

Mmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (55:13)
and you can have a beer in these big open baths, your skin and your bones crinkle spectacular. They've got these bars called Ruin bars that are old buildings that were turned into just basically decorated by graffiti and the young people just created them as a place to go and they're now part of the modern culture. So all these Eastern European cities have a lovely story to them as well and then you've got the main ones, you've got the Italy's, the Paris and the Rome and these great places to go as well.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (55:14)
gorgeous.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (55:41)
We're very lucky in Europe, you can go an hour from one place to another. It feels like you are in a different country, but it feels like you're in a different land, a different continent, a different part of the world.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (55:49)
Yeah, so different to Toronto where it takes an hour to go from Toronto to Toronto.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (55:54)
No, no, you've got four seasons. Don't underestimate the four seasons in Canada's. No.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (55:59)
Not this year, Kevin. Not this,

we had no winter this year. Well, that's another conversation. Yeah, I can probably count the number of days that we had snow this year. It was a little scary, to be honest with you. And the last two days, which for anybody who's listening at a later date, today's March 21st (2024), so we're around the first days of spring. It was like horizontal snow coming through at us. So I don't know, four seasons. I hope we still have four seasons going forward.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (56:03)
Really?

Well, we've only two, so even if you're three, you're ahead of us. We've rain and no rain. Last year, when he was coming to Ireland, don't guarantee the good weather in the summer. Last year as a tour guide, I was out in the rain in July more than all the other months put together. But an interesting stat about Dublin as well, Dublin receives less rain than Brussels, Belgium. Over the full year, yeah, over the full year. I like to talk about Brussels a lot. I did a tour there a couple years ago. Here's my stat about Brussels.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (56:29)
True. Yeah.

Ugh. Yuck.

No way!

Hahaha!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (56:55)
The world's first shopping mall was in Brussels, Belgium. First shopping centre. It was called the Shopping Gallery. So basically you had to pay to get in, it was for the wealthy. Ireland didn't get a shopping mall, as you guys will call it. We call them shopping centers here, but we didn't get a shopping centre until 1962. So before 1962, everybody done their shopping on the streets. And they went to markets. They would call them the Fruit Man, the Fruit Man to buy your fruit. And you go to the Fishmonger, Fresh Fish Inn.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (56:58)
So random.

Cool. Markets. Right.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (57:21)
You know, our

traditions are incredible. Hey, I have a new story since I last met you as well, Tara. This is a true story. I talk a little bit about Ireland's tradition with fish and chips, right? It comes from the Italian people building churches originally. First World War broke out and they started to provide food. So it was uno and uno, a one and one. Piece of fried fish and a piece of fried potato. Anyone who knows of good fish and chips in Ireland will know that you always put salt and vinegar on it. Not lemon traditionally, salt and vinegar. Vinegar, I discovered or heard this recently that...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (57:32)
Mm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (57:49)
It's something that was used a long time ago in Ireland. We used to put it on potato during the famine between 1845 and 1852. We put vinegar on potato to stop people getting sick that were forcing themselves to eat the potato with disease. So just to go a little bit in for anyone that's not aware of the Irish famine. So between 1845 and 1852, two million people emigrated. One million people went to North America. So that was the start of the Irish going to Canada, for example.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (58:00)
Great.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (58:15)
Newfoundland would have been the big one and their generations kept coming and you know so on so but anyway That's where this tradition of salt vinegar comes from It comes from back in the old days of the potato famine vinegar was put on potato People put it into a body and it would stop them from actually, you know Getting sick because the potato was foul as you call it

Tara (Travel with TMc) (58:33)
Yeah, so wild. This. I love it. I love it. So interesting. We've got just a couple questions left. I know it's late on your end there. But I'm curious to know what's something that you do when you're travelling that you don't do when you're at home? Like, do you whether it's conscious or unconscious? Is there something that you can think of? Yeah, okay. All right.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (58:53)
Yeah, for sure. Enjoy the sun.

I'd like to say swim in the sea, but I do swim in the sea in all weather in Ireland. I think one thing that's very important for me when I travel is embrace other cultures. You know, embrace other cultures, whatever that may be, but you know, food, drinks, sights, meeting new people.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (59:15)
Mmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (59:18)
I like to do, I think it's always very important, I like to go for a walk and sit in a local bar and have a beer on my own with the locals and just see what the vibe is. I like this a lot. But I suppose it's a, I also like when I travel to, I was conscious that I'm representing my background as well and where I'm from, so I always like to make huge effort to be curious about other cultures and to make new friends.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (59:26)
Yeah, what's the crack over there?

And to be sure, everybody loves the Irish everywhere you travel around the world. You guys have a wonderful reputation. As a part of a bonus for the listeners, I'm going to be curating, with the help of my guests like yourself, a travel playlist. And I'm curious to know what's one song that sums up either your travel style or that reminds you of one of your trips.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:00:10)
Wow. Okay, I need, I need, I need, I need a minute to think of the name of the song. And I might need to help a Google in the background here. I'm gonna have to come back. I'm going, I'm going. There was a summer song in Greece.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:00:18)
Okay.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:00:32)
There was a summer song in Greece we had. I'll have to write it. It's gone. I'm going blank. I'm going to wait. I'm on Google in the background here.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:00:39)
Okay. No worries. You send me an email. Okay,

that works.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:00:44)
Do do do, eh.

No, it's, I'm going, I'm completely blank, to be, to be continued. Uh.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:00:49)
We'll keep the people

in suspense. They'll have to read the show notes

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:00:51)
This is 20 years ago.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:00:53)
You're grand, it's fine, just send me, yeah, send me the email and we'll add it in, that'll be great. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:00:57)
But

I will tell you about my song for my time living in Canada actually. It was Sean Paul. Sean Paul, was that his name? Yeah, and Justin Timberlake had just released his album. Justin Timberlake had just released his album. His first solo album.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:01:01)
Okay, yeah!

Yeah?

I love it.

Amazing. All right, we'll have to add that one in too. We'll add that one, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:01:18)
There you go.

Yeah, we'll add this. No, let me find this song. I'm gonna write it to you. I'll send you an email later. I'm gonna find it. I'll send you a YouTube link to it with someone singing it. I'll be up all night looking for it. Greek songs 2004 or whatever it may be.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:01:25)
Okay, cool.

Fab, that's great. No! Okay.

All right, we're gonna finish with a speed round. So in one or as few words as you can, we'll get you to answer these questions, all right? So, yeah, oh, we're getting an AI thumbs up here. All right, where was your last trip?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:01:47)
Go for it!

Merry Christmas!

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:01:58)
Where is your next trip?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:02:00)
Oh, that's a very good question. Home for a wedding, for my cousin's wedding. Home, when I say home, it's 45 minutes away. It's a town called Dundalk where I grew up. But that's my next trip. My next overseas trip, we have a baby on the way in July, so it might not be until 2025, unfortunately, overseas. But we'll sneak a week in Dingle when the weather's still good before October.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:02:06)
Oh, lovely!

Mm-hmm. Break.

Fair enough.

Lovely, lovely, great. What's your favourite mode of transportation for travel?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:02:35)
right don't laugh at this one the mopeds scooter old school I have a in our parking lot downstairs we have a car but we also have a vespa and I just love it because Dublin's you know Dublin's it was built for horses and carts and our cars and not trucks and big cars so you can just scoot up to the very front and spin around and the noise i love going out to the sea and just going past the little

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:02:40)
I love it.

Love it. That's awesome.

Mm-hmm.

So handy.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:03:03)
The beauty of the Dublin is there's little seaside villages and you can go by for the sea run and it's fantastic.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:03:08)
Mm-hmm. Agreed. Definitely. Do you prefer planned trips or spontaneous trips?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:03:14)
Plans. I'm boring.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:03:18)
No, that's not boring.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:03:20)
I like to plan trips, it keeps me active. I really like to daydream about where I'm gonna go and what I'm gonna do and plan it out.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:03:28)
Nice. Yeah, that's part of the process for a lot of people I find. It's part of the excitement for it. Um, right. Yeah, so true. Are you an underpacker or an overpacker?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:03:32)
Get you through the long winter days.

I'm a changed man. I started as an overpacker, but now I'm an underpacker. For sure. And I just got delivered this week, one of these new bags that you get, just one small bag with lots of different compartments and you put everything together. Yeah, it's my new best friend. So that's all I'm gonna ever let myself travel with from now on.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:03:45)
I'm the same!

Love those. Amazing. That's fantastic.

I love it. What's the most overrated destination that you've been to?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:04:07)
Wow, wow, that is an amazing question. I'm gonna answer that one. And this will, Vegas, I'm gonna say Las Vegas. Let me explain why, because don't get me wrong, Las Vegas is such a special place, the lights and the amazing, yeah. But you know what, for everything Las Vegas offers, in terms of sun, in terms of beautiful buildings, in terms of heat.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:04:20)
Alrighty.

and the mafia.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:04:37)
in terms of the gambling culture. We have that in Europe. We don't need to go all the way and pay such high prices, but we have this experience in Europe. Gambling's legal if people want that, but you can do it at the beach as opposed to in the desert. You can be in a resort, you don't have to be at the very top. You can be low and have small little buildings. So I will say interesting enough, Vegas as a European, because we have that on our doorstep, but because of the movies, we're dragged towards the bright lights.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:04:39)
Yeah. Right.

Right.

Yeah.

great ring.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:05:06)
But we

don't need to do it.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:05:09)
Okay, what about the most underrated destination?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:05:13)
Wow, I'm going to say the most surprising destination I've been to is Croatia. Croatia just blew me away with the friendliness of the people. You know, if anyone doesn't know this, we're Game of Thrones. If you look at Game of Thrones, when it looks cold, it's Ireland. When it looks sunny, it's Croatia, but it just blew me away with the actual food. It's nicknamed the poor man's Italy. But some of the finest meals I've had in my life have been in

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:05:20)
Okay.

Oh.

No!

I'm sorry.

Yes, ah.

I agree on both accounts. I've been to Croatia and the people were lovely there and having part Italian heritage and been to Italy several times, I agree about the food too. That's, yeah, very neat.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:05:52)
It

surprised me, it surprised me an awful lot. It surprised me a lot. You know, you go to Italy, you expect it to be amazing. You know, that's what you go for. You know what you're getting, it's amazing. But Croatia, it was, it was, you know, again, a spontaneous trip and it was, you know, we went to a place, we didn't do much research and we were just like, wow.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:05:59)
That's what you go for.

Nice, that's awesome. What home comfort do you miss the most when you're away?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:06:20)
This is gonna be, you ask any Irish guy this, right? When they're out of Ireland for, you know, six months, you know, at the beginning you embrace all the local stuff. I have to answer that in three things, right? A pint of Guinness, fish and chips from my local fish shop, and Tayto cheese and onion potato crisps, the world's first flavoured potato crisps. Come from Ireland.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:06:32)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they

just had like a huge birthday, did they not?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:06:46)
The, I couldn't tell you to be honest with you, but the, the

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:06:48)
Yeah

Yeah.

Oh.

Oh, I do believe it. It's on sandwiches. Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:07:16)
as kids you're getting a bit hungry, supper for eight o'clock. So the potato, the crisp sandwich became the delicacy of the day. So pack a potato, cheese it on your crisps, a pint of Guinness and fish and chips, my local fish and chips shop. That's my craving when I'm away from home for six months.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:07:34)
Love it. What's the best piece of travel advice that you've received? Or that you've read somewhere or heard somewhere?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:07:44)
Wow. I'm going to go back to what I said at the very beginning that it's, that it was about the culture in Ireland is that we've had so much history of emigration that you know remember what it was like maybe 200 years ago you know there's no phones people were leaving for life they were never going to come home. Not always were immigrants given a warm welcome in history. So when people are travelling to always make a huge effort to make them feel welcome and make them feel at home.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:08:07)
Right? Yep.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:08:14)
and make them feel like they belong.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:08:17)
window seat or aisle seat?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:08:19)
100% window.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:08:21)
And does that depend on if you're travelling with Aoife? Like, do you guys take turns? I find with couples sometimes they like do the dance, oh, you had it last time, you can have it this time.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:08:29)
Yeah,

no, not at all. No, Aoife is not a fan of them. Aoife would be doing her  and  her aisle. So, so, so it's, so no, I'm window all the way window all the way, and Aoife is more, Aoife is more, if she can get away with sleeping on my shoulder the whole way through the flight, happy days. So that's kind of ours. No, I like to go into the window and put my head and scratch into the corner. The longer I can sleep and not move, I'm not one for moving, I avoid getting up.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:08:33)
Nice! That works out well!

I'm with you on that one.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:08:58)
bathroom breaks as much as I can and all that. I just want to sit there and zone out and land.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:09:01)
Yay.

Nice. Describe yourself as a traveller in three words.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:09:11)
Okay.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:09:11)
or a visitor.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:09:15)
thirsty, hungry and fun.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:09:19)
Someone brand as well. Ha ha ha.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:09:21)
Yeah, yeah, touch

the hunger, but that's it. I was like, well, you know, I arrived in your country. It's like, OK, all right, how do we judge this country? How much does a local beer cost and how good is the beer? Number one, what's the food scene going on? And I definitely found it adventurous. Like the first thing I actually will do in all truth, it's not go to a pub in Ireland, if I'm beside the sea, the very first thing I will do by tradition is get to the water and get into the water as quick as I can. That's the very, very first thing I look for when I get to the beach.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:09:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that.

Wonderful, very cool. Okay, last two. What is the best gift for a traveller? It could be a product, a service, or an experience.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:09:59)
Can I show you? I'm gonna show you, right? I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you many things, but this is my.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:10:00)
Yeah, okay. Oh, okay, all right.

Okay, for people who are listening to the audio, I'll describe what he's showing. He's just grabbing it right now. This is an interactive podcast, folks.

where we

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:10:30)
So just for the audience there, Kevin had to run away and get a bag. I got this for you for this podcast. So I give it to you next time you're in Ireland. OK, so it's from the Guinness Storehouse on St. Patrick's Day.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:10:36)
Oh, okay. Oh.

Is this what I think it is? No. Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:10:44)
It is a baseball cap, right? With

a bottle opener at the top of the cap. So you can open your drink from the baseball cap.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:10:55)
and everybody else's, you'd be everybody's favourite person.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:10:57)
You'd be a hero at a

concert. You'd be a hero at a concert. At an Oktoberfest in Kitchener, you know. But that's one. There's another one I have from Ireland here actually. It's just something I do like to talk to people about. It's a relish. If anyone makes it to Ireland, by Ballymaloe It's a... It was the first Michelin star chef in Ireland. Martel Allen.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:11:05)
Oh, that's amazing, yeah.

I knew it!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:11:25)
in the 1930s and she was the first female Michelin star chef in Ireland and We kind of talked with stories of the mention which we kind of don't talk enough about the ladies and she was incredible in the 1930s Complete entrepreneur as she was fantastic chef But she wanted to make a product for the local people in our community as well to enjoy who wouldn't be able to afford at The time it was very simple food. So there's sweet tomato based relish made in County Cork, sun-dried tomatoes, which is quite credible for Ireland different types of tomatoes different types of peppers vinegar

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:11:40)
Yeah.

Yeah!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:11:53)
And it basically is it will change your life and it costs three or eighteen in a supermarket And I would always put this on a toasted ham and cheese grilled ham and cheese or put it beside with an omelet So that would be that would be that would be that would be that would be mine But when I do travel to other countries, I love to take something home from You know flavours a Reminder and sometimes things are sentimental value. I still have my t-shirt from Higher Ground a rock climbing centre in

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:12:03)
I can vouch for this.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:12:23)
in Sportsworld. It's yeah, Higher Ground. I still have the t-shirt. Sometimes I get some things of sentimental value which are so, so important. So that's another one. It doesn't have to be huge amounts of money. It's sentimental value that bring back a feeling or a memory. For me, that was my... I was in Canada as well. I have it on my keyring. It's pretty much in pieces, but we went out to...

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:12:23)
I should have worn my Sportsworld shirt. Oh my gosh episode number two will coordinate

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:12:54)
We went out to an area to learn about culture of the native settlers. And we make key rings. And I still have the key ring. But you depict colours that represented your personality.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:13:03)
Huh?

Amazing you'll have to send a picture. We'll add that in. Yeah No, you're fine It's okay last one. Do you have either a favourite travel app or a website? That you would suggest to people

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:13:08)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, lots of lots of culture. Sorry. I'm not this was me long story short quick questions

You know what, these days, to be honest with you, it's 100% anytime I'm gonna travel, it's gonna be Travel with TMc. And it's the only way to go. It's all the way to go. I do try to make a huge effort because I'm a small business owner. I know what it's like to kind of read and to see what's in the local area. So I think some of the business partners out there, like Get Your Guide and Viator, you know, Get Your Guide for us would be absolutely spectacular. So I do.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:13:31)
Aw yeah, Travel with TMc! Favourite guest!

Yeah, and that's how I found you guys originally.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:13:53)
I do share that.

And actually since your visit, we hired a photographer from Get Your Guide on Friday. And they were doing a program with us, basically to bring us to the next level for our images. And that all stemmed from your visit as well. So, you know.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:13:57)
Yeah.

Fab?

Cool.

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that, that's amazing!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:14:13)
It's fantastic but I also love local knowledge. You know, word of mouth is so important. You know, so word of mouth. That's why these chats and these podcasts are so important. Because it's, I think if you hear somewhere, like I'm the type of person that when I go to another country, I don't want to eat fine dining. I want to know what the locals eat. Where's the best pizza slice around here?

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:14:16)
Yeah, you can't go wrong. Yep.

Yeah.

Dig in.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:14:37)
You

know, where's the best, where's the best, where's the best beer? What do the locals do for sports here? You know, what's, what's.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:14:43)
Right?

Oh, speaking of this is a total aside, but um, what is it? Hurl? No, hurling? Hurling is still though, it's still the only sport I haven't seen in Ireland. It's on my list. I've been to a rugby match. I've been to...

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:14:50)
Hurling, yes, he gave it stick!

You know what,

you have a sport, people in Canada are the only people in the world I meet that can relate to this. Because you've got lacrosse. So think of, hurling is actually a faster field sport. They use a hurl, which is a hurl and a slither. So it's an incredibly fast sport. The players don't get paid, they do it for honour. And the most amazing thing is when you watch the goalkeepers throw themselves up in the air and they're diving. They've got this stick and the ball hits the stick. So it's an incredible, incredibly fast sport.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:15:01)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So similar.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:15:24)
passionate sport and I'll say it's definitely one of the big Gaelic games, but hurling in particular, you know, if you move away from the cities and you're going to the West and you're going to the, you know, it's the traditional sport of the people.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:15:25)
Yeah.

Yep. The West. Yeah,

it's on my it's on my Ireland bucket list. Catch a hurling match for sure.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:15:40)
Let me know when you're coming,

I'll make sure we... You know, what's in the area, we'll try and get you to a game.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:15:46)
Are there matches in May? I think... Oh!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:15:48)
Yeah, it does be. Yeah, so the game plays through the summer. So depending on how everyone's doing,

but the season starts through the summer months. So it's actually, you should be able to get a game. Our biggest stadium in Ireland actually is Croke Park, it holds 82,000 people. But there's another one you might be interested in, it's called Experience Gaelic Games. You can actually get up in the morning and go training with the teams.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:15:58)
Brilliant.

I've been, yeah.

I think I saw a TV show with this. It was hilarious. Yeah. Oh.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:16:11)
Yeah, yeah, they're great. They're

incredible people. They're trying to promote the sport. That's the number one rule of Gaelic football. The number one rule is you promote the sport and then after that you compete. So the fans, even if the fans are the biggest rivals, they sit beside each other. Even if the players have a punch up on the pitch, they'll go for a beer afterwards. We have a saying actually, it's soccer. I'll call it soccer. Soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:16:26)
Great.

Yeah!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:16:39)
Then we have rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen, but the Gaelic sports are games for hooligans played by hooligans. So they're the sports of the Irish people and you know players never got paid. Traditionally it was about representing your community. That was enough honour. And hurling is a great representation of the passion of it. It's a really skillful sport. So there's two options. You can go and watch a game, a tree option. You can go to the museum that shows you all about it and it's very interactive, which is excellent. The Crook Park meets Stadium Museum. You can even walk up on the roof. Our number three is, have you done this?

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:16:45)
Okay.

Yeah!

Yeah.

Great.

I've done that, yeah.

Yeah, I did, when I was working for USIT we had an event at Croke Park, and so we were able to get a little, not quite a tour, but just a little walk around of some different places in there.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:17:19)
It's absolutely fantastic stadium and then you've got to experience Gaelic games So, you know if you wouldn't want to be out in the beer the night before the cider the night before but you know You get you up early in the morning and you'll be you'll be training like an athlete with the players and it's great fun

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:17:33)
Yeah, I've always said Irish athletes are on another level because while we have winter here and hockey is played indoors, there are heaters there for the spectators. All Irish sports are outdoors in the most awful weather sometimes and it's just like the mental stamina to me is on it's on another level. Kudos!

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:17:52)
It's from the Gaelic games and they say that's why a lot of people in Ireland are very good at rugby as well because there's young kids still having these tough games. So now these days when we look at soccer and they're crying on the ground at their sore finger, you know, it doesn't... And you'd have the Gaelic players with a broken arm playing on, you know, their leg hanging off them.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:17:58)
Yeah.

Right, yeah, it's mad.

Yeah. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's always so lovely chatting with you. I appreciate you making the time, especially with the time difference and the tech difficulties at the beginning.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:18:26)
Not

at all, not at all. It's an absolute pleasure, Tara. Genuinely, I wish you all the success with the podcast. And it's been a ray of sunshine meeting you and your positivity to tourism. And I just, I just, I just, I just, I love having these chats and I love the connection with Kitchener and my own history and your history with Dublin. It's like we've crossed over. So I just think it's absolutely amazing story. So I have this for you when you come to Dublin, your Guinness hat with the bottle opener.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:18:35)
Aww.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh,

you're so sweet. Thank you.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:18:55)
So later on I'm going to find out the name of the song for your listeners. I really hope it's never made it to Canada because this song can change your life if it hasn't. It's fantastic if you're 20 years younger than I am. But it would have been my song for the summer seasons, the years we would have worked over in Greece. So it was by that time of my life, it's a song that always brings back happy memories. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:18:59)
Yes.

Okay.

I just love it.

Wonderful.

That's okay. You'll send it, yeah.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:19:21)
So, Go raibh maith agat as mé a bheith agat

my friend. Go raibh maith agat Mia Mahogos. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:19:25)
Thank

you. Before we go, where can people find you one last time? Website, socials, and is there anything else that you want to add about Walking Food Tours in Dublin?

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:19:34)
Oh,

thank you. I'll use this for some shameless publicity. So in Ireland, we don't use dot com, we use dot IE. So it's www.walkingfoodtours.ie That is our website. We're on Get Your Guide, Viator, all the major platforms with www.walkingfoodtours.ie And I suppose just to share what we do, we were very different than the other food tour models. We're really trying to focus on sustainability. So we have a really low entry fee to our tour and we don't include the food. So we charge a low entry fee for a three hour guided tour.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:19:38)
Two. Oh, three.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:20:04)
And basically people will buy their own food, but it's street food, it's not expensive. The idea, the reason we did a model like this is to make it more inclusive. We found that traditionally food tours are very highly priced, very exclusive. We wanna be inclusive for everybody. We want to be an experience for young people to come and learn. Families, you know, that you normally wouldn't do food tours because they're priced out of it. And we find that in our model, you don't have to eat anything, but whatever you eat, you buy. So people generally eat what they choose themselves. We'll make recommendations.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:20:30)
But you make great recommendations

as well. Yeah

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:20:32)
We do, and

in fairness, I'm telling the truth, 99.9% of people follow our recommendations. It's just be part of the culture, but sometimes people would maybe have their breakfast or maybe not eat as much, so they'll go in and out and come back another day or experience the story. So the idea of it is to be the most sustainable food tour in the world. So there's no food wastage, and it goes back to the modern world and what's happening to the world, and to be considering that and to be part of the solution and not the problem.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:20:46)
Yeah.

Yep, I'd say you guys.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you guys do a lovely job with that. Fabulous. All right, well, sweet dreams over there.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:21:06)
Okay, I'm not going, I'm not going to bed until I email you a link to YouTube to this song. Okay, so anyone listening here, right? I might be up all night looking for this. Okay, thank you, thank you so much. Go raibh me a maith agat. Thank you everybody for listening and a big hello to everybody in Kitchener. Big love here from Ireland. And thank you to everybody, if there's anybody listening to this, it was part of my journey in Kitchener. Special shout out to you guys and thanks for the warm welcome.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:21:19)
Amazing awesome. Thanks Kevin.

I'm sorry.

Kevin Adams(Walking Food Tours-Dublin) (1:21:35)
received and we want to pay that back to all our Canadian visitors. Thank you.

Tara (Travel with TMc) (1:21:41)
Yep. Cheers.