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We got to Dublin and checked into our hotel. We had to stay at a hotel near the airport, because for some reason there were no rooms available inside of Dublin. We took a bus into town and bought a two day pass for a double-decker sightseeing bus. You can hop on and off as you wish for two days, and the buses run about every 20 minutes. We could also catch a local bus from near our hotel into the city with the same pass.
We went on the Guinness tour, which while not actually being a tour – was still fun. There is some law in Ireland against people touring actual breweries. So if they let you in at all, so they usually just show you a video. But the Guinness Experience is a self paced multimedia exhibition. It’s got multiple floors, with a bar on top and a tremendous gift shop at the bottom. There is the bar where you can have your “free” sample, and another one where you can try the different beers that Guinness brews (you have to buy these though). I’m sure that everyone at the Haven is familiar with Guinness Draft, and many are familiar with The Guinness Extra Stout that comes in bottles. If you want a real treat, and you can get your hands on it, the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is the stuff. It has a tremendous amount of flavor, almost coffee like – but a very strong coffee. It is also high in alcohol, and very bitter so it’s probably not a real summertime refresher.
While we were waiting for the bus outside the Guinness tour, we were talking to this woman from New Jersey. Previously, we had found out that Bruce Springsteen was playing a couple of shows in Dublin while we were there, and I asked the Jersey Girl if she was stalking Bruce. Well, she denied it, but we both started laughing when she told us that she had already seen him in London and was going to Paris to see him too. Not really a stalker, but only a serious fan would follow him throughout Western Europe.
We didn’t get to see Bruce.
We wondered around for about 2 days, seeing the sites, stopping for a pint now and again. Dublin is really a nice city, and I think that if I ever get back to Ireland (and I would like to see the Western part of it) Dublin would be well worth another trip. Everyone was very nice to us, we had some great food, and the stouts were better than good.
The Guinness Foreign Extra Stout was good, but the two best that I had were at the Porterhouse Brew Pub. They have an Oyster Stout that is very good (they actually throw a couple of raw oysters into the conditioning tank while it’s brewing) and they also have a stout called Wrasslers XXXX Stout, which was exceptional.
Check out my flickr page, because I’ll be uploading a bunch more pictures from Dublin later.
Gratuitous Food Pictures…
Here is a sandwich I made a couple of weeks ago. I started out with this olive roll, sliced it and laid down a bed of cucumber slices…
Placed some tomatoes on top of that…
Added a fried egg and some Creole seasoning…
Some Tsatziki sauce on top…
A little lettuce…
Voila!
About two weekends ago I decided to have some friends over and smoke some meat.
The pork shoulder was a little dry, but the chicken was very good.
And I think Gib would be proud of my work on these ribs.
Everything was enjoyed by all present, and I even had enough smoked chicken left over to make a hellacious smoked chicken salad the next day. Of course that was after I finished off the ribs ... for breakfast.
If everything works out I may be heading to Amsterdam this weekend.
No, I’m not talking about Obama.
This being my 100th posting, I thought it was time for a re-design of this thing. I did this to be able to show the photos larger on the main page. Since I don’t think anyone reading this is still using a dial-up modem, the increase in picture size shouldn’t slow things down too much. There will continue to be more photos on the flickr page. Please feel free to let me know how you like the new layout (or if you don’t), if the color scheme works, and whether it is easier or more difficult to read than the old layout. Truth is I’m not really sold on it myself yet.
Ireland (continued)
We left Cork in the rain, on a bus to Kilkenny. The trip was nice, and the weather came around on the ride. The bus took us through some very pretty rolling hills and lots of open spaces. The fields were incredibly green and had small hedgerows and overgrown stone walls dividing them. It seemed like they mostly grow grass here. However, in the spring time, from a moving bus, it would be difficult for me to pick out the differences between grass, oats, barley, or wheat.
We arrived in Killkenny and had to walk about a mile to our Bed & Breakfast, where we dropped off our bags and proceeded to walk the mile back into town. We wandered around town, took pictures, had a few pints, explored a bit more, pissed in an alley behind St. Mary’s Cathedral, had dinner, a few more pints, and watched some local rock band at Matt the Millers for a while before heading back to the B&B.
Kilkenny (Chill Chainnigh was one of the Gaelic spellings I saw) is a pretty little town that seems to be based mainly upon tourism. Inside of the town most of the homes are very small row-homes, some of which are painted some pretty wild colors. Outside of the city it resembles the U.S. a little more, with individual homes on decent sized lots with lawns. In fact I saw a landscaper’s truck there, and I think it was the first one I’ve seen in Europe.
The next morning we had a nice breakfast at the B&B, checked out, and walked the mile to the train station and hopped on the train to Dublin.
OK, OK, I’m back. You may ask, “Where have you been?” Well, it’s a long sordid tale, involving a giant Philippino, too much coffee, festering open wounds, and a Croatian midget stripper with no legs. I can’t really talk about it until the charges go away.
Personally, I don’t think that midget will stand up in court.
Actually, after I got back from the trip to Scotland & Ireland I wasn’t feeling like myself. Of course I didn’t go to see anyone (or anyone with a rudimentary medical training) about this, because I just felt it was midsummer malaise. But then things started to get strange. I was nodding off at work, and couldn’t seem to get to sleep at night. I stopped drinking coffee, but it didn’t help. I stopped drinking beer, and that didn’t help either (thank God). I was restless yet didn’t have the energy to do anything. Then my boss came to me with a corrected version of something I had written, and it was full of misspellings. My boss said he was full of misgivings. I was starting to have headaches, and it became even more difficlut to concentrate. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a hospital bed two weeks later. The doctors told me I was in a comma for two weeks.
The last paragraph was an inside joke. If you didn’t get it, sorry but you must be outside.
So here’s the deal. We lost an engineer here at work. His workload became my workload, and my own workload was not “how you say” small. So I had been working quite a bit of overtime. That was for the month at the beginning of this little sabbatical. Then I just got a little writer’s block. That on top of being lazy, and here we are…
So Ireland, you ask?
Well after waving goodbye to the haggis, we flew into Cork City in the rain. We took a taxi to our hostel and checked in. It was mid afternoon by this point, so we headed into town in search of a pint of stout. And it was just our luck (some might even say it was the Luck of the Irish) we found an establishment that had some. The pub was called the Raven, and the barmaid gave us each a pint of Murphy’s. With apologies to my sister, I found the Murphy’s to be quite good. The barkeep reminded me of a friend’s wife, only she was younger, had many more piercings, and larger “Howyadoin’s”. I won’t mention who she looked like, because I was beginning to have impure thoughts.
We ended up at Clancy’s Bar and had a few more stouts. I had a bowl of soup and some Cork fish pie. Cork Fish Pie is fish in a cream sauce, with a mashed potato topping. Sort of a shepherds pie … without the shep. It was one of those dishes that sounded like it would be good, theoretically; however, empirically, it was not up to snuff.
We sat at Clancy’s among the Faire Colleens and watched the Manchester United vs. Chelsea soccer game. It was quite a game, and a much livelier crowd than I would have expected in Ireland for two English teams. After the game we walked back to the hostel in the rain and retired for the evening.
The next morning I took a cold shower. It was invigorating, but far from pleasant. It was still raining, but only lightly now. We walked into town for a bit, and things looked a bit dreary. We didn’t go on the Beamish tour, because it’s just a video presentation and you have to pay for it. “No thanks, I’ll waste my money in a proper pub, thank you very much”. We did go to the English Market though. This place is basically an indoor farmers market and is pretty cool, but we didn’t buy anything.
We decided to grab lunch then catch a bus to the Blarney Castle. The weather came around for us on the ride, and the sun even came out for us. We toured the castle and kissed that stupid rock. This thing is supposed to bring eloquence to those who kiss it … and I haven’t been able to put two sentences together since then. Who knew?
We did a little shopping at the gift shop, and caught a bus back to Cork. When we got back I asked the hippy at the desk about the hot water (or lack thereof). He went into this long description of how it doesn’t always work on every floor, but it’s never out on all floors at the same time, and how I should just go to another floor if the water is not hot on my floor. He said that the pipes are old and he doesn’t understand the system (which was apparent to me, but I was tired and just let it go). There was no hot water the next morning either, but at least it was tepid.
