On the final leg of her world tour of the USA prior to the election fiasco later in the year, vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin took a wrong turning at Boston and ended up at Shannon Airport in southern Ireland.
When she arrived in the terminal building, she was immediately struck by the lack of Americans and American flags.
At a special press conference convened to try and find out where she was, Mrs Palin was immediately struck by the non-American accents greeting her at every turn, together with sayings such as "to be sure, to be sure" and "mine's a Guinness".
Although she felt the flight that was meant to be between Boston and New York has been quite long, she was said to be happy to be in Ireland, even though she never knew exactly where Ireland was. However, she told the assembled reporters, bar staff and cleaners that she was amazed that there were so many Irish people in Ireland.
"I thought Ireland was full of saints and scholars, not Irish people" she excitedly exclaimed. "And so many of them are Irish!"
She was said to be a little confused that Irish people would want to live in Ireland, and couldn't understand the attraction for people born in Ireland to actually be Irish. Although she has previously said the same thing about the nationals of Canada, Japan and China, the only other countries outside America that she has ever heard of.
