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Went to Dublin on Tuesday for an over-nighter, paid for by my husband's work. Had an amazing time, and really want to go back when we can spend more time there.
If anyone's planning on going soon - I can heartily recommend the Oliver St. John Gogarty in Temple Bar. You wouldn't believe the size of the portions. My husband had the Irish Stew, and the stew alone would have been more than he could eat, but it came with a leg of lamb sat in the middle of it!! I think it would have quite happily fed a family of four for about a week...
One thing all of us commented on, was the fact that every shop seemed to have security guard in the door way. It was rather oppressive in a way, and I'd dearly love to no the reason for it. Do they have a massive shoplifting problem?
The one fly in the ointment was the company. There was eight of us - my husband and me, and three of his colleagues and their wives. For a start, my husband aside, I was the youngest there by about ten years, which doesn't normally bother me, but it did with this group. Then there was the whole no-common-interests thing going on. I didn't dare talk about the shows I was into, (Buffy, Angel, etc) let alone mention fanfiction. (They mainly watched ITV and felt themselves avant grarde (sp?) if they watched BBC)
So that was the minor irritants. The major irritants -
1) Hubby's boss. Kept on doing a bad Irish accent, continuously throughout the two days. Now I don't know about you, but if someone came to Bristol and kept on doing dodgy Bristolian accents, I'd get slightly annoyed with them. Every time he did it I found myself wincing.
2) One of Hubby's colleague's who treated me to a fifteen minute rant of how insular and ignorant of the wider world Americans were. This is despite me telling him I had some good American friends, and trying to convince him that none of the Americans I came into contact with regularly on lists and boards etc, fitted that stereotype. But no - the one American he knew, (his brother-in-law), gave him knowledge of the entire American race! I was tempted to point out that all cultures had their small insular and ignorant subsets, and that he was a prime example of said set, but in the interests of my husband's working harmony, I thought I'd better not.
I now understand why my husband never goes out socially with the people he works with.
But the rest of the trip was good. Esp. the visit to the old Jameson's distillery. I am now a convert to Irish Whiskey as opposed to Scotch, after having a chance for comparison tasting of various Irish Whiskies against a scotch and bourbon. Although (going back to the discussion of Americans) there was an American lad there (and I apologize to my American friends here) who made me think "Bloody Yank." He really was the type who gives all you guys a bad name. Despite it being mentioned in the video three times, and by the tour guide twice, that the building was no longer used for distilling, he still asked her at the end whether they still "made" whiskey there. And then after volunteering for the whiskey tasting, (which I'm not commenting on, seeing as I volunteered for it too), he drank each sample in one go, despite the tour guides injunction not to. And he was loud.
But never mind. The whiskey was good. :-)
If anyone's planning on going soon - I can heartily recommend the Oliver St. John Gogarty in Temple Bar. You wouldn't believe the size of the portions. My husband had the Irish Stew, and the stew alone would have been more than he could eat, but it came with a leg of lamb sat in the middle of it!! I think it would have quite happily fed a family of four for about a week...
One thing all of us commented on, was the fact that every shop seemed to have security guard in the door way. It was rather oppressive in a way, and I'd dearly love to no the reason for it. Do they have a massive shoplifting problem?
The one fly in the ointment was the company. There was eight of us - my husband and me, and three of his colleagues and their wives. For a start, my husband aside, I was the youngest there by about ten years, which doesn't normally bother me, but it did with this group. Then there was the whole no-common-interests thing going on. I didn't dare talk about the shows I was into, (Buffy, Angel, etc) let alone mention fanfiction. (They mainly watched ITV and felt themselves avant grarde (sp?) if they watched BBC)
So that was the minor irritants. The major irritants -
1) Hubby's boss. Kept on doing a bad Irish accent, continuously throughout the two days. Now I don't know about you, but if someone came to Bristol and kept on doing dodgy Bristolian accents, I'd get slightly annoyed with them. Every time he did it I found myself wincing.
2) One of Hubby's colleague's who treated me to a fifteen minute rant of how insular and ignorant of the wider world Americans were. This is despite me telling him I had some good American friends, and trying to convince him that none of the Americans I came into contact with regularly on lists and boards etc, fitted that stereotype. But no - the one American he knew, (his brother-in-law), gave him knowledge of the entire American race! I was tempted to point out that all cultures had their small insular and ignorant subsets, and that he was a prime example of said set, but in the interests of my husband's working harmony, I thought I'd better not.
I now understand why my husband never goes out socially with the people he works with.
But the rest of the trip was good. Esp. the visit to the old Jameson's distillery. I am now a convert to Irish Whiskey as opposed to Scotch, after having a chance for comparison tasting of various Irish Whiskies against a scotch and bourbon. Although (going back to the discussion of Americans) there was an American lad there (and I apologize to my American friends here) who made me think "Bloody Yank." He really was the type who gives all you guys a bad name. Despite it being mentioned in the video three times, and by the tour guide twice, that the building was no longer used for distilling, he still asked her at the end whether they still "made" whiskey there. And then after volunteering for the whiskey tasting, (which I'm not commenting on, seeing as I volunteered for it too), he drank each sample in one go, despite the tour guides injunction not to. And he was loud.
But never mind. The whiskey was good. :-)
