Dublin!

To take my mind off the current threat of world destruction, I decided to report on mine and my dad's recent trip to Dublin!

The flight to Dublin from Leeds Bradford went very smoothly, I have to in particular recommend the Viking car park system - you park your car a couple of minutes away from the airport, they take your key, and give you a lift in a mini bus to the airport, and then on return they monitor the flights so that as you leave the airport the mini bus pulls up again to take you back to your car, and this happened flawlessly.

Once in Dublin we headed for one of the oldest drinking establishments in Dublin, Mulligans.

It may not be obvious from the photo, but of the 25 or so beer pumps behind the bar, no less than 4 of them were devoted to Guinness, and as we walked in the barman was pouring pint after pint of the black stuff.  We wasting no time in ordering two pints for ourselves and finding a seat.

Then, I remembered one of the other excellent drinks available in Dublin (any many other places I'm sure) are hot whiskeys - whiskey, hot water, a slice of lemon with cloves placed carefully within, and an optional spoon of sugar.

Hot whiskeys are quite small though, and we found that it was more sensible to order a hot whiskey with a pint of Guinness, so that we didn't have to go to the bar quite so often.

For some reason after a few hours in Mulligan's we went to the hotel and slept for 16 hours or so.

The following morning we happened upon a cafe called Metro that did a decent breakfast, that somehow managed to make us feel halfway human again!

So the second day was spent at a more relaxed speed, visiting the Guinness Storehouse but apart from that catching up on the Commonwealth Games.

I did experience one of my pet hates that evening when, going out for some dinner, I ordered a pie.

For the avoidance of doubt - the photo above does not depict a pie.

A pie should be fully encased in pastry (ideally shortcrust).

What this meal consisted of was a bowl of stew, with a hat on.

The last day we went to several museums - the "National" museums of archaeology, natural history, The National Gallery of Ireland, and Book of Kells are all sited quite close to one another.  I have to say that the free options (aka not the Book of Kells) are definitely the better ones to experience.

Massive skeletons of gigantic deer in the natural history museum

Of course, no trip would be complete without one awkward experience, and that would be the flight back to the UK. When it was time to get to the plane, we obediently boarded two buses that would take us there, which then sat and didn't move for a while.

Then they drove us to the plane, but didn't open the doors, they just showed us the plane for a while. Eventually they told us that we couldn't board, because the crew for the plane hadn't shown up yet. If only we'd had some kind of paperwork, or card, that told us which seat we were supposed to sit in! Maybe you could call it...a boarding pass?

Eventually the crew arrived - it turned out that the normal crew wasn't available so it was a standby crew that had been brought into action - and we took off.  Very soon after lift off they advised us that conditions at Leeds Bradford Airport were extremely bad, and that there was a good chance that we'd end up at Manchester Airport instead - not ideal, when my car was at Leeds Bradford.

Despite this, they did manage to land at Leeds Bradford even though as far as I could see the fog was such that there was no sign of any lights, runway, or even where the ground was for that matter. The landing was a little rougher than the one at Dublin (which was in the middle of the day in good weather) but we were just happy to be down, in one piece, and even better, where we were supposed to be.

All in all I certainly had a great time, and I'm renewed in my desire to work out just how to make a hot whiskey!

Dublin

This time in 7 days I shall be arriving in the city of Dublin with my dad for 2 nights of fun and enjoyment with my dad.  I haven't been to Dublin for about 12 years, when I may have undergone various Chinese health treatments whilst inebriated, but I do have very happy (albeit fuzzy) of the place.

Click on the photo, but the Conference Centre Dublin has on their website a "list of upcoming events that we are permitted to publish"... I suddenly want nothing more find out what the events are between these ones, even though it's probably just a convention for dental hygiene products or something.

I've booked the Guinness Storehouse tour (last time I went there was a HUGE queue of people that hadn't booked, while I was able to go to the pre-booked stand and go straight in, so hoping this is still the case!) and also a musical pub crawl, where you go round 3 pubs and learn about the history of Irish music - whilst enjoying a pint or two, of course!

I've nearly sorted everything, although I do need to measure my backpacks to ensure that they comply with the maximum flight sizes - maximum bag size is 48cm high, 33cm wide, and 20cm deep, I'm totally unable to imagine what that equates to, but every time I think "oh yeah, I must measure the backpacks" I'm busy doing something at the computer, and the backpacks and the measuring tape are never in the same place as me thinking "must measure the backpacks"!

We're currently 3 days into the 4 day UK Easter weekend break, with today, Easter Sunday, being the big one where almost everywhere is closed - even the supermarkets don't dare open on Easter Sunday - so I'm currently demolishing an easter egg ahead of going to the cinema (which is open despite being Easter Sunday) to watch some Peter Rabbit.

So I hope you're having a good weekend wherever you are, happy Easter!

Cortana is spot on

I was playing with Cortana tonight, when it tagged onto the end of one of its answers "Why not ask me where to go on holiday"

So I did.  We went through various questions - did I want a city break, should it be lively or chilled out, a long distance or close to home, and so on - and I got the below.

Yep Dublin - which is impressive because I love Dublin (especially the Guinness!), and am planning to go later in the year with my dad (once he's survived the interrogation of the UK Passport Service - only kidding, I'm sure it'll be fine!), so full marks to Cortana on this one!

Happy St Patricks Day!

Happy St Patricks Day!  Congratulations to the Irish in their recent rugby game beating France, apparently it meant something bad for us (England) but as I don't follow rugby I don't exactly know what! But well done to the Irish anyway, and being a day for the Irish, it seems appropriate for me to share a story from the last time I was in Dublin.  I should say that the story is from a few years ago, and I was tired and emotional so I apologise sincerely if I have got any of the details wrong.

Now let me say, I love Dublin.  I haven't been for about maybe seven years, and to be honest it's far too long, I definitely need to get myself there. And yes, Guinness tastes different there to anywhere else - anywhere else, it has a sort of burnt aftertaste, while in Dublin it's more like mild, a very easy to drink beer.

So, I went to Dublin by myself for a long weekend, not long before I moved out of my parents house.  I got to my hotel around lunchtime, had a spot of lunch and a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, and decided to walk into the city centre.

And I thought it might be quite jolly to stop at each of the bars on the way to the centre, and have a pint in each one.

However, I had stayed in a hotel maybe half an hours walk out of the centre, and in Dublin there are quite a few pubs.

So, by the time I got to O'Connell Street, which I seem to remember is where the main shopping area is, I believe that I had had somewhere in the region of seven or so pints, mostly Guinness but I think there was maybe a pint of lager in there as well, just to mix things up.

And I came across one of these chinese health shops.  If you've been to any decent sized town or city you'll have come across one of these, they do acupuncture and herbs and all kinds of things to cure everything from weight problems to baldness.

Being somewhat merry, I noticed that the person stood at the entrance to the shop was holding out some leaflets. Hey, I thought to myself, lets grab a leaflet.  We're on holiday, lets go wild.

So, I grabbed a leaflet.

Now the usual social process for such a situation is that I take hold of a leaflet, and the person with the leaflet lets it go.  Maybe there's a smile or perhaps even a "Thanks" uttered, and that's optional.  But the letting go of the leaflet so that the punter can take it with them - that seems to me to be a key part of the event.

She didn't.

Instead, she walked backwards into the shop while holding on to the leaflet that I attempted to take, dragging my inebriated self with her.  She sat me down on a chair, and then after a couple of minutes went by I was taken into a small room at the back, where there was a Chinese doctor (I assume) and a translator.  The translator said a lot of stuff which basically came down to "You're fat, so we're going to do acupuncture on you, we're going to give you a shoulder and back massage, and do cupping for 35 euros."

I should explain that cupping isn't some bizarre fetish, it's a therapy which involves putting glass jars on your back, with tealight candles lit in them.  The candles burn away the oxygen, creating an area of low pressure, which sort of sucks the skin into the jar.  I think that it's supposed to be good for blood flow.

I remember one point of bizarreness being that after the translator left, the doctor starting talking English.  Maybe she wasn't the translator, maybe she was just the doctor's boss.  And when I'm referring to the doctor, she probably wasn't a doctor, I just called her that.  She might have been the cleaner for all I know.

Anyway it was all quite fun, the massage was pleasant enough (all above board and the like), I don't really remember anything about the cupping, and the acupuncture was quite weird - if you asked me before if someone could stick a load of needles in you without it hurting I would have said no, and even now I would probably say no, but I have to say that at the time it was fine, I even remember waving my hand and watching the acupuncture needles wobble.  The doctor seemed to think it was funny that I could look at the needles without cringing.

After the treatment, I went out to the main part of the shop to pay, and they told me that they would have to book me a new appointment.  I explained that I was on holiday, so they suggested that they could book me an appointment at their London branch in England.

London is about four to five hours drive from where I live.  Not going to happen.

So, they then attempted to sell me 270 euros of teabags, herbs, oils, and assorted paraphernalia because I wouldn't be able to attend another treatment. I made some excuse (I think that I might have said that I was bankrupt), paid the 35 euros for what they'd done, and left to find another bar.

So the moral of this story is... don't try to drink in all the bars in Dublin.  You won't do it and it won't go well.

Now, I need to get some Jamesons Whiskey so I can make a hot whiskey.

Happy St Patricks Day!