A Full Day in Dublin

After sleeping on and off during the night, we got up the next morning and were ready for a day in Dublin. Now, we did sleep in fairly late so we really didn’t need a huge breakfast (certainly not the full Irish breakfast I had the morning before). We had heard of this local cheese shop off of Grafton Street on Anthony Bourdain’s Dublin episode of “The Layover” and also a PBS episode of an Irish food show called “Clodah’s Irish Food Trails.” We looked around and on South Anne Street, a block and a half off Grafton Street, we found Sheridan’s Cheesemongers. Here it from the outside:

 They had a wonderful selection of cheeses from all over Europe but we were interested in specifically Irish cheeses. We sampled a bunch of local cheese, mostly in this area of the shop right in the front:

We decided on four different cheeses, all from Ireland. Three were from County Cork and one was from County Tipperary. We ended up with small pieces of a Coolea, a Cashel Blue, a Smoked Gubbeen and a Durrus. We then took a quick visit to St. Anne’s Cathedral at the end of South Anne Street who counted among their parishioners the author of “Dracula” Bram Stoker.

Then we headed back up Grafton Street to find somewhere to sample our cheeses. On the way back toward our hotel I notice a store called Marks and Spencer (M&S) and caught a glimpse of a sign that pointed down the escalator that said “Food Hall.” Now one of the things that Joan and I like to do when in other places is to visit grocery stores. It gives us a glimpse into everyday life in a place. We do this in other parts of the United States all the time so it would be very interesting in another country. Well the “food hall” was indeed a full blown grocery store. We wandered around for a bit and ended up buying some fresh rolls from the bakery to eat with our cheese.

We headed down to St. Stephen’s Green and found a bench in the center of the green and got out our rolls and cheese. Here’s what we saw:

Here also, are some quick pictures of our cheese and the rolls. Here is the Durrus:

Here is the Smoked Gubbeen:

And here are the Collea (on the left) and the Cashel Blue (on the right):

As soon as we opened up our cheese and started to eat it, we also found this little guy:

He was very interested in our cheese. So were we. As the cheese go, I enjoyed the Smoked Gubbeen the most. It was a Gouda style cheese that had a great smoked flavor. The Durrus was my second favorite as it was a semi-soft cheese. The Blue was also very good. The Coolea was a softer cheese that I wasn’t as fond of. For the most part I don’t like softer cheeses. Brie has never excited me so it is understandable that the softer Coolea was not as much to my liking. We ate about half of our cheese and then headed back to the hotel to put the rest in the mini-bar for breakfast the next morning. Then we headed out to use the second day of our hop-on, hop-off bus tour.

We rode the bus a few stops down the route and got off to see Dublin Castle. Since the G8 Summit, which was held there, just finished the week before, the state apartments were not open yet for tours. So we checked out the outside of the castle and then headed into Temple Bar. Our number one destination in Temple Bar was the Hard Rock Café. As you may know, Joan collects a shot glass and a pin from all of the Hard Rock Café’s that we come across. On this trip we could possibly hit six new Hard Rock Cafés and this is the first. It was a short walk from Dublin Castle and after finding our shot glass and pin we were back to catch the bus. Along the way back to the stop, we found a little restaurant that had a two-for-one deal for bus tour ticket holders and it was about time for lunch, so we stopped in.

This restaurant was called The Shack and was in an old building that back in the day housed a butcher shop.

It was a very small place as most of the places were that we had found in Dublin and it served traditional Irish cuisine. I perused the menu and decided on an Irish classic, Bangers and Mash. For all intents and purposes, Bangers and Mash are just Irish sausage and mashed potatoes. It seems the term "Bangers" dates back to the 1920s when, during rationing, sausages were made with water and could explode if not cooked carefully. Although modern sausages won't explode, the term "Bangers" has persisted. Joan also picked a very classic dish, Fish and Chips. Here’s what we got:

After lunch, we got back on the bus and rode the rest of the way around the loop. Among the stops was Phoenix Park which is an urban park two and a half times bigger than Central Park in New York. It also houses the Dublin Zoo which is the largest paid attraction in all of Ireland. The highlight of our bus loop though, had to be St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We took many, many pictures but here are a couple of the best ones:

We got off the bus at Trinity College and it was a short walk back to Grafton Street. At this point we were in need of a restroom so we popped into the McDonald’s. At this point I remembered the words of Dr. Sheldon Cooper in the TV show “The Big Bang Theory.” In one episode he stated that when using the facilities in a retail establishment, it is customary to make a small purchase. So, of course I fished out two Euro and got a couple more of these:

Delicious, deep fried Apple Pie. Thank you Sheldon!

Next time, our last dinner before flying to London for the cruise and we're still looking for Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Until next time,

Mike

My Bucket List Gets One Item Shorter

One of the happy coincidences in planning this Baltic Sea cruise was I that I was able to cross an item off my bucket list. My favorite show of all time has to be Riverdance. The story of how I got into Riverdance is a whole story in and of itself but suffice it to say that I had seen Riverdance 13 times in the United States in locations from New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to the Pantanges Theater in Hollywood. Well, I vowed that one of my bucket list items would be to see Riverdance in Dublin where it all started. In planning this cruise we determined that Riverdance would be at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin right about the time of the cruise, so that’s how we ended up with a couple of extra days there before our 12-day Baltic cruise. As we wandered Dublin before getting into our hotel, we found the theater:

Now, since we had been planning this trip for quite some time, I was able to get my tickets very early and we ended up in the very front row. Here is a quick view of the theater and of the stage from my seats:

The show was as fantastic as the other 13 times I had seen it and I couldn’t have asked for any more. The show was at 5:30 so of course when it was finished, we needed some dinner. In my preparation for the trip, I had found on-line a little place a couple of blocks from the theater called the Whitefriar Grill. This place interested us because prior to the trip we had sampled a couple of Irish restaurants in Las Vegas and found a wonderful dessert called Sticky Toffee Pudding. We were eager to try it in Dublin and according to the menu on the Whitefriar’s website they had it on their dessert menu. So we walked the two blocks to the restaurant:

Once we got there, we browsed the menu and were disappointed to see, no Sticky Toffee Pudding. We ended up eating there anyway because the rest of the menu sounded interesting and besides, we were getting pretty hungry and we were already there. We would vow to find Sticky Toffee Pudding somewhere else before we left Dublin.

So we headed in and got a nice table for two and browsed the menu again. I had just about settled on something they called “Ribs and Rump” which was a combination of barbeque pork ribs and a rump steak. We then noticed that they had an “early bird” special that was good all night Saturday and Sunday. This being Sunday we decided to take advantage. With the early bird you were able to pick an appetizer and a main course. Well one of my appetizer choices was the barbecue pork ribs and the rump steak was a main course option. So there you are, the “Ribs and Rump” and at a discounted price. I ordered that and out came our appetizers. Here are my ribs served on a wooden plank:

And Joan ordered a prosciutto and melon appetizer:

The ribs were very good. I wouldn’t exactly call them Irish cuisine but still very well done. When my steak came it was also served on a wooden plank:

Now you can see that it was served with thick cut chips (French fries) and you can see a small little salad. What you can’t see is the actual steak because it was buried under that big heap of fried onions and let me tell you they were wonderful. They were fried just enough to be crunchy but not too much that they crumbled when you ate them. The steak was a perfect medium and being a rump steak is not a cut that you normally see in a steakhouse. I did notice that I did see it on the menu several places in Ireland though.

We had the option with our “early bird” meal of adding a third desert course, but since they didn’t have what we were looking for, we decided to add a cheese board as a dessert. It was supposed to come with three different cheeses but they were out of the third kind and brought us a little more of the other two. Here’s what it looked like:

It was served with crackers and a wonderful strawberry jam that went well with the cheeses. We asked the manager what the types of cheeses were and he wondered where our third cheese was. He went to the kitchen and was able to get us a sample of the third cheese so we actually ended up with some of all three. I’ll talk more about Irish cheeses next time.

So that was our meal. We left the restaurant and took a short walk back up to Grafton Street. Now last time I mentioned something about a blast from my childhood past. Have you been able to figure out what I found in Dublin, Ireland that reminded me of childhood in Ohio? Well, on Grafton Street there is, like many thousands of places across the world, a McDonald’s. Now I swore that on this trip I may look at some McDonalds’ but would not get anything there that you can get in any McDonald’s in the United States. I had heard a rumor about a certain item that was no longer available in the US but was still available overseas. Who out there remembers these:

That’s right, it’s the good old fashioned, super bad for you, great tasting, burn the roof of your mouth, deep fried McDonald’s apple pie. I had not had one of these in probably 20 years since the US McDonald’s switched to the baked apple pies that are possibly a tiny bit better for you but in every other way inferior to these beauties. For the super low price of only 1 Euro, I was able to take myself back to every McDonald’s I ate at from birth until they took away my “Egg Roll” style apple pie. So if you’re looking for one of these, I can tell you that you can get it here:

On Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland (and I’m guessing about 1000 other places across Ireland, the UK and probably most of Europe). After that wonderful night cap we were back to our hotel for our first real night’s sleep in Dublin and hopefully we’ll adjust to the time change OK.

Next time I’ll tell you about our second and final day in Dublin that included some local cheeses, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a pub lunch.

Until next time,

Mike

Things Start to Get Interesting

Thus far on our journey, it had all been airport food and airplane food; nothing very interesting at all. Well, the Philadelphia pretzel was maybe one notch up on the interesting scale but that’s all. Now we had landed in Dublin and after standing in line at immigration and gathering our bags, we were in a taxi and off to Dublin city centre. We arrived at our hotel between 9:30 and 10:00 in the morning. We were staying at the Fitzwilliam Dublin right across the street from St. Stephen’s Green. We had a reservation for that night and we were really hoping that they would have a room ready for us to crash in for a few hours after our long flight. I made a quick inquiry and after receiving a very polite “No, I’m afraid not,” we left our bags with the concierge, bought some tickets for a hop on, hop off bus tour and headed out into the streets of Dublin.

Our first stop was Grafton Street. This is one of the main tourist shopping areas of Dublin and it was just steps from our hotel. Well, being it was Sunday, not many of the shops were open which was actually fine with us since we don’t do a whole lot of shopping. What we could use, though, was some breakfast. Now I was reminded of the words of the immortal Anthony Bourdain in his Dublin episode of “The Layover.” I edit it a bit for this blog, but when discussing breakfast he says, “This is no country to be f&%$#in’ around with a croissant. Go big, or go the f^&%^ home.” Well that’s exactly what I intend to do. I want to find me a traditional Irish breakfast. We walk along Grafton Street and find a couple of places that advertise it (of course, you can find an Irish breakfast a whole LOT of places in Ireland). We settle on what looks like a little café called Brewley’s.





When you walk in there is a little bakery and coffee shop on your left and a few little tables on your right. However, when you walk back a bit, there is the full restaurant. There were two levels with tables everywhere. We were sat on the first level near the back of the restaurant. Here are the stained glass windows with what appeared to be a very old opening mechanism that were right behind us:

We sit down and Joan orders some pancakes with banana and nutella. It really looked quite good (and I did sample a bit of it). Here’s what she got:

As I said, it looked and tasted great, but that’s not what I was after. I was in Ireland and I was going to sample the full Irish breakfast. I checked the menu and I saw: “Full Irish Breakfast: Potato farl, grilled bacon, sausage, tomato, pudding, mushroom, poached egg, famous homemade relish and two slices of toast, served with freshly squeezed orange juice and tea or regular coffee.” That’s it, that’s for me. When it came to the table, here’s what they put down for me:

Now, as they mentioned in “The Layover” you can’t eat this every day. Anthony Bourdain quoted Clint Eastwood when he said “A man has to know his limitations.” But I was going to do it today. It was my goal to sample everything on the plate. The potato farl was a kind of potato pancake that you see in the front of the plate. The mushroom was nothing special, just a marinated mushroom. I’m not big on poached eggs but I did eat this one. I usually prefer eggs scrambled or over hard. The runny yolk has just never done anything for me. The sausage and bacon you can see in the picture as well. They were both very good. I particularly liked the bacon which, unlike American bacon, is much more ham like. I don’t like tomatoes, but as I vowed to try everything I did take a bite. It was, well, just a tomato, nothing super special about it, so I left the rest. Now we come to the pudding. You can’t see in the picture but below the toast was a slice of black pudding and white pudding. Now, this is not what we Americans think of as “pudding.” You don’t have this for dessert, there’s no milk in it and it doesn’t come in chocolate. This was more of a sausage that is made with oats and other fillers. The difference between the black pudding and the white pudding is that the black is made with pig’s blood and the white was not. I was a little apprehensive of trying these (especially the black) but I did and I have to say that they were quite tasty. I don’t know if I will be going out of my way to find them in the States, but if I’m ever in Ireland again, I know that I can get my full Irish breakfast and be OK with the black and white puddings.

One other thing I wanted to mention about this full Irish breakfast was the orange juice. I usually prefer apple juice with breakfast but this place only had orange and it came with my breakfast. So I got that and Joan ordered a glass too. As soon as we took a drink we knew this was good orange juice. Joan mentioned that it tasted much better than the stuff she had on the plane a few hours earlier that came out of a can. On our way out, we noticed a machine that backed up their “fresh squeezed” claim. If I had been thinking, I would have snapped a picture of it, but I was still a little foggy from the flight. In any case, basically whole oranges (peal and all) when it the top and orange juice came out the bottom.  You can’t get much fresher than that.

Well we ended up taking the entire loop on the Citysightseeing tour bus. Since our tickets were good for two days and considering how tired we were from the flight, we figured we would just ride today and get an idea of what we wanted to see the next day. This bus tour was suggested by the concierge at the hotel and it turned out to be an excellent way to see Dublin. There are a couple of different “hop on, hop off” tours in Dublin (notably the “red bus” and the “green bus”) but they seem to pretty much go the same places. If anyone is in Dublin this is an easy way to see a lot of different sites in Dublin without a lot of hassle.

We got back to the hotel about one thirty and our room was still not quite ready. We wandered down to the shopping mall on the corner of Grafton Street and St. Stephen’s Green and then back to the hotel. It was about a quarter after two o’clock when we finally got up to the room. The concierge brought all of our bags up to the room and we were able to take a small nap before we headed out to cross an item off of my bucket list.

 I’ll go into that next time along with our first dinner in Dublin and a blast from my childhood. You’ll never guess what I found in Dublin that took me back to my childhood in Ohio.

Until next time,

Mike

Getting There Is Half the Fun?

I know what they say. Clark Griswold said it in National Lampoon’s Vacation. “Getting there is half the fun.” I truly hope that that is not true because getting there wasn’t all that much fun. Don’t get me wrong, considering how far we ended up going, it wasn’t horrible. There weren’t any long flight delays or lost luggage (although I will have a small comment on that later) or anything else miserable, it just was not that much FUN. So, in this case, I’m hoping that “Getting there” is about 2% of the fun.

Anyway, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (I know we’re not going to Austria but we are going to Germany so we need a little Sound of Music reference in there). We were dropped off at McCarran International Airport by our nephew, Andy who will be keeping our house standing and, more importantly, our dogs Max and Roscoe alive, while we are gone. We got to the airport at about 9:30am for our 11:30am flight. We check in our three bags and head up to our gate. Now, we are flying US Airways and on a transatlantic flight, we get one bag each free. However, the third bag is going to cost us $100. Well, what are you going to do; we need three bags for a 15 day trip so we have no choice.

We need something for lunch and as is the case in most airports there are fairly limited options and everything is expensive. So, after passing on Burger King and Moe’s Southwestern, we decide on a place called Flatbreadz (yes, with a Z). They had an array of flatbread sandwiches that were OK. I will say that they layout of the place needed some work. They had a couple of people making the sandwiches with some signage that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. You really couldn’t tell if there was one line or two lines and people were cutting in and just walking up ignoring what semblance of a line there was.  Of course by the time we actually finished eating there was no line whatsoever. Oh well. Anyway, I ended up with a roast beef sandwich that came with some arugula and a mayo/horseradish spread. Here it is:

As I said, it was nothing special but it was something for lunch that kept us going. We board our plane bound for Philadelphia and we begin our journey. This flight is scheduled for just under five hours and it is the short leg of the trip. As far as flights go it was uneventful. There was no major turbulence and we were right on-time getting into Philly. This was good as we had about an hour and a half layover before our flight to Dublin. We checked at the gate and after they checked our passports, they told us that we were all set. We wandered a bit and found a little more airport food. We both ended up with a slice of pizza from the Villa Pizza in the airport. Again, it was nothing special. If you really want to see it, here it is:

Joan and I also split a salad that we got next door to the pizza place. It was alright. The biggest complaint I had was that we, at first, wanted a turkey club salad. Well they were out of turkey. OK, chicken Caesar salad. Well they were out of lettuce. Really? A salad place out of lettuce? We had to get it with “Spring Mix” which was OK, I just still don’t understand how a salad place was out of lettuce. Anyway, on our way back to the gate, I found the first of many interesting things on our trip. Philadelphia has a unique shape to their soft pretzels. I’m not sure why. The pretzel itself is just a soft pretzel but the shape is flattened out. We bought three from the cart at the airport and got on our flight to Dublin. I pulled on out on the plane and here it is:

There was one other interesting food point that I wanted to mention about our journey to Dublin. Our flight from Philadelphia was scheduled for just under seven hours. Well, as it was a trans-Atlantic flight, I saw something that I had not seen for many, many years on an airplane, an actual airplane meal. And yes, they are just as good (or bad) as you remember. Here’s what we ended up receiving:

It was some chicken in some sort of sauce, a small salad, a roll with butter and a blondie brownie. It was edible, it kept us fed, but I wouldn’t want to eat it every day. On the way back we get lunch, we’ll see if it’s any better.

In any case, we arrived in Dublin early, at about 8:00am local time. Of course that was midnight on the time we left. We stood in line for only about 40 minutes at the customs and immigration line. It was pretty painless really. They just asked why we were in Ireland and how long we would be staying and then we were off to collect our luggage. Now, here’s my comment on missing luggage. US Airways have this wonderful little app on their mobile site that allows you to track your luggage using your name and airline confirmation number. I tried it for the first time this trip. When we got to Philadelphia, I plugged in the necessary information and our three bag numbers came up. I looked at the details for all three and saw the same thing: Bag checked in, bag on plane for flight to PHL, bag off plane in Philadelphia. Great, our bags have made it. I check a little while later as we were eating and getting ready to get on. Now two of the bags show that they are on the plane to DUB and the third does not. Oh, no! I mention this to the gate agent and all I get in response is “You should be fine.” What? So we go to the baggage claim (or Bag reclaim as they say in Europe) and I am just waiting for two bags to come out and the third to be gone. Well guess what? All three come out. Of course, I’m thrilled about this but I guess my comment to US Airways would be, “If you’re going to have this thing to track bags, MAKE SURE IT IS ACURATE.” If it works then people can use it to track their luggage and know when their bags are actually on their flights. If it’s not (as I ran into) you just give people something to worry about when there is nothing to worry about.

In the end though, we got our bags and start out of the airport to find a taxi.

Next up, we’re in Ireland and we start sampling some of the local fare.

Until next time,

Mike

I've Been Slacking Off I Know

OK, OK, I know I haven’t put anything up for a long while. I had some other things to write about but had the standard situation of “I just got busy.” You know that’s a nice way of saying that “I just got lazy” and I was slacking off. Well now, Joan and I are off on a very long vacation and I thought that I would go back to putting up some blog entries. The entries here will mostly focus on the food we eat on our trip but I will also describe some of the places that we go and some of the things we see as well. I am writing this as we are part of the way through the trip. I don’t want to have to compile and edit the whole darn trip when we get home.

We have been looking forward to this trip for a long time now and now it is finally here. This will be our first trip to Europe. Here’s where we will be going:

·         Saturday, June 29: Fly from Las Vegas to Dublin, Ireland

·         Sunday, June 30 – Monday, July 1: Stay in Dublin, Ireland

·         Tuesday, July 2: Fly to London, England and take a car to Dover, England

·         Wednesday, July 3 – Monday, July 15: 12 Day cruise of the Baltics aboard the Carnival Legend with stops in Copenhagen, Denmark; Rostock/Berlin, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; St. Petersburg, Russia; Tallinn, Estonia; and Amsterdam, Netherlands

·         Monday, July 15: After tour of London, fly back to Dublin, Ireland

·         Tuesday, July 16: After overnight in Dublin, fly back to Las Vegas

As I said I will be focusing on the food that we will eat. Some of it will be the everyday, some will be wonderful local food in the places that we visit and some will be the great food on the cruise ship itself. Now within the cruise ship, there are a couple of special surprises there as well.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks and I’ll tell you all about it. I should have enough material to put together some very interesting posts. I will do my best to get through it all and not tail off before the journey is complete.

First up will be our journey “across the pond.” It won’t be the most interesting but it will start us off on over two weeks of eating through Europe.

Until next time,

Mike