Ireland – The Emerald Isle from Dublin to Cork

We visited Ireland again! It has been over a month, so I am woefully behind on the blogging here, but here goes. This was a work trip for Joe and I just tagged along. So during the days, he was at work and on the evenings and weekends, we had a bit more fun. To that end, I think there isn’t quite as much to write about as usual, but here’s how our trip went.

We flew on separate flights, since his company paid for his and he had different cities to go to. So it was kind of a romantic goodbye as we drove together on a mid-November morning to the San Francisco airport and kissed each other goodbye at the gate before boarding separate planes, only to meet again on the other side of the world. I had a direct flight to Dublin, which landed at 11 a.m., and Joe flew through Heathrow, so he got to Dublin at around 4 p.m. So while I was waiting for him to arrive, I took a taxi into town and visited the Dublin LinkedIn office. They were very welcoming and friendly, and I contributed to their ‘Failte’, or ‘welcome’ wall.

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Once Joe arrived, we stopped for a very jet-lagged lunch/early dinner at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. I had a nice lamb stew and some Smithwick’s. We tried really hard to stay awake, and walked round town a bit. We enjoyed walking through the nearby fancy shopping district, Grafton, before wandering back to the hotel for drinks and sleep. The hotel was very fancy and has the fanciest bar we have ever been to. We stayed at the Shelbourne Autograph Collection Hotel. There’s a bar upstairs with maybe 20 seats total, 5 or so around the bar and a few small tables in the corners. There were 2 bartenders and 4ish wait-staff. It was incredibly intimate and cozy and we were very well attended to. We, of course, drank Irish whisky drinks. I had a neat whisky and Joe tried some of their cocktails.

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Dublin – Day 2

After dinner, we desperately tried to sleep off our jet-lag, but this is an exercise in futility. We slept as much as we could, being awake too much at 2 a.m. and still asleep at 10 a.m. We dragged ourselves downstairs to breakfast before it closed and made our way out into the city. Across the street from our luxurious hotel is St. Stephen’s Green. We walked in the cold through the park and explored, reading about the different monuments and historical Irish events. The park is lovely. The history of Ireland is as gruesome as you already know it is. So it’s not really an uplifting exercise to read all the things, but interesting nonetheless.

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From here, we walked through town to the Jameson distillery. We kind of thought, eh, why not, might as well since we’re in Dublin. But no, this was a super cool experience and I’d recommend it for anyone who likes whisky, even if you’re not really a Jameson fan. We both love whisky, so showing up to huge copper pot stills in the courtyard was a good mood-setter. We signed up for a barrel-tasting tour first. Here, a lovely lady took us into a special barrel-aging room. The air in the room is apparently so high in alcohol that there are special fire alarms/sprinklers that are so sensitive that a flash from a camera can set them off, so we each had to go through an examination of our phones/cameras before entering through multiple sets of fire doors. She used a metal dipper on a chain to scoop out whisky from a barrel that had been resting there for 16 years and pour each of us a glass. Pure, pot-distilled 16-year barrel-aged whisky, obviously cask-strength. The room itself smelled heavenly, and a barrel-stave pair of angel wings on the wall to denote the “angel’s share” made for beautiful photos. We sipped the truly delicious (and potent) whisky while inhaling a bit of the angel’s share.

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From there, we took the general tour, which was guided by the same adorable girl. She really had fun with it and made the experience entertaining. Also, we were allowed to keep our glass and continue drinking the whisky from the special room while we walked through the tour, which was fun and also made all the other tourists jealous. We learned about the Jameson family and the distillery and all the different types of workers required to keep the place running (before industrialization). Stone grinders and barrel coopers and millers and farmers and people who toasted the grains and distillers, oh my. Then we learned about their specific process for making Jameson whisky, which is blended from barrel-aged pot-distilled whisky and a modern-distilled whisky aged in sherry butts. Then, finally, to the tasting room. This is where I say it is a good tour to take, *if you already kind of like whisky a bit*. We’re in the tasting room, where we are served Jameson Irish whisky alongside an unnamed American whisky and a Scotch. The tour guide explains how to properly smell/swirl/taste whisky before asking us to sip the Jameson first. Here, in this moment, when it is dead silent because no one is talking because we are all sipping whisky, a very hungover British girl, who is with a couple of other hungover British girls, “whispers” to her friends “That’s disgusting” as soon as she sips it. The whole room burst into laughter. I suppose if you’re not a whisky person and you are already hungover, it is probably disgusting, but also you should maybe not say that out loud. From there, we continued tasting the other whiskies. I preferred the Scotch to Jameson, but the Jameson was way better than the American whisky. Finally, she told us that the American whisky is Jack Daniels, which explains that. And the Scotch is Johnnie Walker Red label. All-in-all, we left with a greater appreciation for Jameson and we enjoyed the playfulness of our specific tour guide. After the tour, they give you either a glass of Jameson or their house-made grog, which is Jameson with ginger beer and lime. We, however, have not had lunch and it is approaching 2 in the afternoon. After 4 whiskies already, I am not in the mood for another. Joe tries the grog, which is pretty good, and we hit the gift shop for a cute adornment for our home bar before heading out to our big adventure for the day: Irish Dancing.

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I made a reservation for us to go to the Irish Dance Party, which amusingly runs every day from 3-5 p.m. We notice that we’re getting to the point where we don’t have time to get lunch (as was our original plan) before walking briskly to the dance party. So we just hope that there’ll be food there and start our journey. We arrive just on time and find our reserved table. And then the chaos begins. They have far oversold this tiny venue, so there are over 100 women, mostly British, and mostly already very drunken hen-parties. It was barely 3 p.m. and women were rolling on the floor. And this was before the party started. We sat at our table and a waiter said he’d bring menus for the food, which is served from a restaurant upstairs, but that never happened. It was way too crowded for him to return. So Joe walked over to the bar and we had Guinness for lunch. After our second breakfast of Jameson and elevensies of whisky sampling. The band showed up and the dancers showed up and they did a little exhibition of what actual Irish dancing looks like before breaking the room into 2 groups for dance instruction. The dance instructors are all actually very accomplished dancers and I am not at all sure how they ended up here. The dancing was fun, but after 1 round of instruction, I had seen what I came here to see and was ready to head out. It was a small room and the women were so LOUD, just screaming and trampling each other. There wasn’t enough room to dance even when they broke us into 2 groups. Overall, I cannot recommend this event.

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From there, we are now starving and wandered out into the cold winter streets of Dublin, hoping to wander back to our hotel via a nice Irish restaurant. We did some quick googling for highly rated places and found a lovely upscale pub. On the way there, we managed to stop in to a few other pubs and get a feel for the local night life. It’s only 5 p.m., but it’s dark outside, so we’re gonna say it’s night-life. We stumbled accidentally upon the Doyle’s pub, which we had previously walked by but never had a drink in, and decided today is the day! We went in and had a pint at this very authentic Irish pub. Then we continued walking to our intended restaurant and saw a local craft brewery. So we decided to check out their microbrewery scene and…. it wasn’t quite what we had hoped. Joe wanted to try their cask beer, which was an IPA. So sad to see how hard it is to find traditional cask ales these days, and very disappointing when they’re not traditional at all. I had a beer that sounded good, but tasted like hay and straw and horses. So we didn’t even finish our beers at this bar, which might technically be illegal in Ireland. We headed back out into the cold, pretty tipsy, and walked to the restaurant for dinner. I had fish and chips and they were delicious, not just because it was the first food I had eaten since breakfast. From there, we went back to the hotel and enjoyed the shower and roomy tub before crashing for the night.

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Onwards to Cork!

The next morning was Sunday, and we took a taxi back to the airport to pick up our rental car. This is a fun exercise in remembering to drive stick on the wrong side of the road, but I managed. We drove through Dublin and made our way to Waterford. We parked and walked through the quiet town of Waterford, where most things were closed because it’s Sunday, but we did go to the Waterford museum store and look at lots of lovely crystal pieces. We picked up a Christmas ornament for our collection here. Then we stopped for lunch and I had the most delicious and wonderfully filling Guinness beef pie, covered with flaky puff pastry. We tried some other local beers, then walked around the town center, where they were preparing for Christmas concerts and festivities. After wandering a bit, we got back into the car and drove to Cork, where Joe has to work on Monday. We arrived at our very posh hotel, the Hayfield Manor, in the early afternoon after driving through gray storms and rain and Joe’s snoring in the car. Still jet-lagged.

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We checked in, where we were offered a glass of ‘whisky liqueur’, which was pretty weird. We dropped off our things and walked out into the cold night air. It’s winter and the sun sets early, so we’re almost always walking out into the dark. We walked into town and found a very old pub that had been recommended to us, called The Oval. It’s definitely one of those places you walk into and it feels like someone is about to hand you a quest to go slay a dragon. Very medieval feeling. Years and years of melted candle wax and a heavy patina on all of the wooden surfaces. While we were sitting and enjoying our pint a this little bar, some of the locals were talking about the upcoming Christmas festivities, where they light all of the Christmas lights in town. As luck would have it, it is scheduled for today, in about an hour! So we look up information about where to go to see the spectacle and trudge off in that direction. It was not hard to find, as 20,000 of our closest Irish friends were also walking the same direction. We made it to the main street, which is blocks away from the actual stage. There are carolers and interesting musical performances from children in the local “Pop Music School”. It was all very Disney-esque with a bunch of tweens dressed in very glamorous clothes singing kids bop versions of Christmas music. So that was a thing. Then, after the singing and dancing, Santa comes out to push ‘Da Switch’, which is a giant cartoonish TNT plunger that will light all of the Christmas lights. Santa is greeted with much joy as he enters the stage to light the lights. After a countdown, he pushes the plunger and there is much rejoicing. There are tons of giant flood-lights, the kind they use for construction, lighting all of the streets since there are such large crowds. So the lighting of the tiny Christmas light strings didn’t really make much of a difference. But it was fun. Then everyone jams out of there as quickly as possible to go have dinner.

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We decided we’d pick a place a bit farther away to eat, to get away from the crowds a bit. This didn’t work out in the end, as it was still super crowded. But we made our way to the local microbrewery to try some more Irish beers. They only serve pizzas here, so we ordered 2 pizzas and I covered mine in pepper oil. They were fine. The beers were good-to-ok. The place was loud and crowded. So we ate and then went back to our hotel.

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Final day in Cork

For our final day in Cork, Monday, Joe had to work, so I wandered the town alone. This was fun and quiet, after all the excitement last night. I started my day with a lovely breakfast at a tiny bakery. I had a sausage roll and a little banoffee pie. The sausage roll was ok. The pastry was delicious, but the sausage inside was a very squishy bologna/vienna sausage type meat mixture and I didn’t care for it. The banoffee pie was, of course, superbly delicious. This is a bannanna-toffee pie, with a flaky pie crust, a layer of banana slices, a layer of liquid caramel/toffee, and topped with whipped cream. It was fantastic with my latte.

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From there, I wandered downtown a bit, picking up some souvenirs. I found a cute Irish dancing girl Christmas ornament in one shop and a “The Quiet Man” branded green plaid scarf in another, which I absolutely had to have. I found a kitchen shop, and there found a unique Irish kitchen gadget: a porridge spurtle… Though it’s apparently Scottish, don’t tell that shop owner. I made it my mission this trip to try to collect interesting kitchen gadgets from different parts of the world. Then, when I get back, I can make some interesting foods and also post those here. Wheee, the circle of life. I walked through the English Market, a local farmers market, and lamented that I couldn’t really buy any cheeses or chickens to take home.

After some mild shopping, I walked uphill to the Irish Butter Museum. This was actually a super cute and fun way to spend an hour or 2. The walk up there is quite nice, and the view from the top of the hill is beautiful. And the Butter Museum itself is actually quite fun and interesting. I learned about butter! From ancient superstitions about butter to the industrialization of the dairy industry, this museum covers it all. There is even a firkin of bog butter you can look at. From here, I was ready for lunch and didn’t really have any plans, so I went back to my hotel and had afternoon tea.

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Now, the Hayfield Manor is a very fancy hotel, with a delicious and filling afternoon tea offering. My day there was a little less than ideal, but the tea and sandwiches were great. The day I was there, they were doing fire alarm testing, and every 2-5 minutes for about half an hour, the fire alarms would go off. The waitress would stop talking, waiting for the alarm to stop, then continue on her way, but it certainly made everyone’s day quite challenging, as it took her twice as long to explain what each type of sandwich is. They also serve tea in common areas of the hotel, so there’s nothing stopping guests from coming into the room with their laptops and making very loud business phone calls, yelling about emails and whatnot. It was the most stressful tea environment I’ve ever been in, honestly. But I think it was just that specific day. I was still enjoying tea when Joe came back from work, so we went out together in search of fun things to do in Cork.

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We stopped into a pub that had been recommended to us, and has live music every night. We got there a bit before the music started, so we were able to find a seat and a table. We had some whisky and listened to the band for a bit. It was a fun experience, very tiny place, that’s a U-shaped bar. So we were only a few feet from the band but couldn’t actually see them. From there, we went walking and eventually found The Old Town Whisky Bar at Bodega, which is where we spent the rest of our evening. The place was huge, but not busy. The bartenders were chatting merrily with one another, and a few off-duty bartenders were having drinks at the bar. It was super chill, and had a huge selection of Irish whiskies, as well as a good homey Irish food menu. I had a beef stew and a whisky. While we were sitting there, the bartenders were opening boxes and putting new bottles of whisky on the shelves. One of them remarked that they can’t believe the manager put this bottle out for so cheap. It should be way more per glass, but they put it with the $20/glass ones. They discuss it at length, how old it is and how rare it is, how few bottles there are. So of course, we immediately ordered a glass to try. It was quite delicious and the food was warm and filling. It was a very nice relaxing evening to end our time in Cork.

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Tuesday morning, we had a 6 a.m. flight from Cork. So we drove to the airport, returned our little rental car, and headed to Amsterdam! We enjoyed our trip to Ireland this time. We’ve been to Dublin before, but only briefly. It was nice to slow down a bit and get a better feel for the town. It’s still a very busy modern city, but it has its own charm. Cork was a lovely city, that felt like a small town, even though it’s huge. There are just blocks and blocks of pubs and restaurants and little shops. It feels like the biggest small town in the world. Everything runs on its own time, whenever the owner feels like opening. It’s just such a chill atmosphere. It was very cozy.