Dublin

(Be warned, this is a long post, but I put in pretty pictures, so I think you can handle it.)

We had an absolutely fabulous 3-day weekend in Ireland. For those who aren't familiar with bank holiday weekends, let me just say, they are the greatest invention ever. In the UK we still get the same number of public holidays as the US (8 per year I think), but since the British aren't too fond of celebrating Thanksgiving and other such American holidays, they spread out the public holidays throughout the year with a fantastic invention called a bank holiday. Basically, the banks decide to close and everybody else does too.

We've got another bank holiday coming up at the end of May, but no formal plans thus far.

Anyway, back to Ireland. We had planned this trip a few weeks prior, booked a flight, a hostel and a fun day tour around the island. A few days prior to the trip, the weather forecast was looking grim and we were preparing ourselves for lots of rain (which really just meant more time in the pub drinking Guinness, so I wasn't too worried). Instead we had beautiful sunny skies the entire weekend, as evidenced below.
Those are the Cliffs of Moher, one of the most iconic spots in Ireland. More about that in a minute.

So, we had a RyanAir flight (only £0.99 - until you add in the £30-40 of taxes and fees) that left WAY too early on Saturday morning. We got into the city and checked into the hostel around 9 am and then started wandering around for the day.

We went by Trinity College (below), the oldest university in Ireland (1592 or something, beating Laura's alma mater of W&M).

The campus was beautiful, and I couldn't even imagine trying to go to school there with all of the tourists wandering around (as some of you know, Virginia Tech isn't exactly a beacon for tourists around the world). Anyhow, we wandered around the campus, then proceeded to wander around the rest of the city for the rest of the day. Highlights include: my first taste of true Irish Guinness, shopping on Grafton Street, walking through St. Stephen's Green park, and some true Irish food.

Sunday we decided to take a day-trip with Paddywagon tours to the Cliffs of Moher.


It was a great trip, we had a great tour guide and learned a bunch about the history of Dublin, Ireland, the potato famine (i.e. "the great hunger") and lots more. The highlight of the trip was obviously the cliffs.This picture above doesn't show how deadly close we were standing to the edge of the cliff, and Laura is masking her fear pretty well in the picture I think.

They're not supposed to let you get this close to the edge either, but we're obviously rebels.

Nearby the cliffs is a place called The Burren, which is basically a huge wasteland of rocks and more rocks. It's got a definite "I'm on the surface of the moon" type of look (aside from the clouds in the picture below of course).


On Monday, our flight didn't leave until 8pm, so we got up, checked out of the hostel and then made our way to the Guinness factory.

There's an interesting and telling glimpse about where our priorities stand. When we walked through Trinity College, there was the option to check out The Book of Kells, a manuscript from 800 AD and one of the most cherished relics in Irish history. But it cost €8 to view, which we thought was way too much. Then there's the tour of the Guinness factory, which is €14 per person, and obviously completely reasonable (it does come with a "free" pint at the end).

The tour was pretty fun, but nothing compared to the great view from the bar on the top of the building. The whole bar upstairs was packed with people, all drinking their free pint of the black stuff and taking in the 360 degree view from the glass-enclosed bar.

"But Bob," I hear you ask, "how much better was the Guinness?" A fair question. The pint at the factory was definitely delicious, and tasted noticeably different from a normal pint in the UK, and definitely from the US. But there's the distinction. Drinking Guinness in a pub in London, and drinking one in a pub in Dublin, I don't think there's a difference. However, there is a huge difference from drinking a pint in the US. Either way, it's fantastic.

Also, I think the following picture should be part of a new advertising campaign for Guinness.
So that's our trip. We had a great time, and it was a great way to kick of the next few crazy months of visitors and trips around Europe.

It also seemed to kick off a much deserved break from the freezing cold winter over here, which I will be celebrating by drinking as many pints of Guinness as I can in the glorious sunshine.

Cheers!

Ireland

We went to Ireland for the bank holiday this past weekend, but I feel that bobby has been slacking off in the blogging department and therefore refuse to post about it and will wait for him to do it. If you talk to him, encourage him to blog.

Things I Miss About American, Part II: Mexican Food

Bobby and I went to a meeting of American Ex-Pats last week. I was expecting to talk to everyone about the US Democratic Primary race and was ready to defend my support of Hillary, however, I ended up talking to no one about that subject but did talk to about 12 different people about how London how no decent Mexican food. Oh how I miss it. And, as it turns out, i'm not alone.

Bobby and I have found one REALLY good Mexican restaurant. But, while it is VERY good, it's upscale authentic Mexican, and that's not what I really miss. What I miss is that hole-in-the-wall Mexican food. You know how every town has that Mexican restaurant whose name starts with El and whose menu is numbered 1 - 64? Yeah, thats what I miss. I miss my taco salad with chicken.

We've explored quite a few very BAD Mexican restaurants in our quest of find a decent burrito. What we've determined is that the lack of any good Mexican food is due to two factors: 1- There are very few (if any) Mexicans in London and 2- You can't get the products needed to produce good Mexican food here. Let's discuss:

1- There are very few (if any) Mexicans in London. Now, this is obviously a gross generalization. But, while i've met people from all over the world in this city (including many Latin American countries), I have yet to meet someone from Mexico and i'm not convinced that the chefs at these so called 'Mexican Restaurants' are, in fact, Mexican. As I discussed in an earlier post, we have been impressed at how authentic the European and Asian food is in this city. However, I wouldn't be surprised if you found a bunch of Italians or Indians in the kitchens at the Mexican Restaurants here (while it would be the exact opposite in the states).

2- You can't get the products needed to produce good Mexican food here. This, is not a generalization. One problem you face when trying to reproduce Mexican food is the lack of a variety in the cheese department. They basically have one type of cheese here: cheddar. It comes in different types (ie, mild, strong, aged, etc), but its all just cheddar. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we can find some feta or mozzarella in the grocery store, but if you wanted something like monteray jack, well, just forget about it. Another problem you face is the fact that they don't have tortilla chips here. They have dorritos and sometimes we can find the just plain old salted variety that come close to American tortilla chips, but, when we've ordered Nachos in restaurants, we've usually gotten Cool Ranch Dorritos covered in melted cheddar. Gross. Another problem Bobby and I face when cooking Mexican food is the lack of ground meats. At home, we would always make burritos with ground chicken or turkey (since I avoid beef) but here, you can't find it. They do offer ground beef, along with ground pork and lamb, so we usually opt for the pork, but its just not the same.

Now, when I come home to visit and just want to go to El (fill in the blank) for every meal, you'll understand why.

Sheila Marie Cooke

I'm not sure how much, if any, of my dad's side of the family visits this blog, but I just wanted to write a quick post acknowledging the passing of my Aunt Sheila who had been corageously batteling lung cancer for the last 8 months and, sadly, lost that battle yesterday.

My heart goes out not only to Uncle Bill and Margot, who lost a wife and mother, but also to all the Gentiles (or formerly Gentiles) who lost a daughter/sister/friend. She will be missed.

Especially after missing Grandpa's funeral last year because I was in South Africa, I wish I could be there to help celebrate Aunt Sheila's life. Missing out on important events in family's and friend's lives is, by far, the hardest part of living abroad.

Happy St. George's Day!

A few weeks ago, I noticed that all the pubs started hanging these white flags with a red cross everywhere. I assumed what I always assume when something's going on in a pub that I don't understand, that is had something to do with football (soccer) and ignored it. About a week ago, Bobby informed me that these flags were being hung for a British holiday I had never heard of: St. George's Day. Neither of us knew what St. George's day was, so we went to the man who has all the answers: Mr. Wikipedia.

As it turns out, St. George is the patron saint of England and that flag is his emblem. So, St. George's Day is like the british version of St. Patrick's Day. Legend has it that a pagan village was being tormented by an evil dragon. To appease the dragon, they would offer it human sacrifices. They decided who would be sacrificed by drawing lots. One day, the queen's lot was drawn. She was about to be killed by the dragon when St. George (a Turkish Christian) showed up on one of his many travels. He promptly made the sign of the cross and slay the dragon. To show their appreciation, the pagan village converted to Christianity.

So yeah, that's the story of St. George as I understand it. More than anything though, St. George's Day is the British national day. St. George's Day happened to be yesterday; so, like true Brits, we did what everyone here does to celebrate: went to the pub.

Things I Love About London, Part 1: The Accents

Since I thought post after post on things I miss about America would make our blog sound too depressing and convince people that we're not happy in London when, in fact, we LOVE it here, I decide to intersperse posts on things I love about London.



Things I Love About London, Part 1: The Accents

Really, these series of posts could be called "Things I Love About London: EVERYTHING", but then it would only be one impossibly long post, so i'm going to try to break it down a little more. Lets start with one of the most obvious: people have wickedly cool accents here. I'm getting better at distinguishing between english vs. irish vs. scottish vs. australian vs. new zealand, but it can be difficult sometimes and people get offended when you mess them up. The other side of the cool accent coin is that people think MY accent is awesome. I had someone tell me the other day that they thought, and I quote, my accent was "beautiful." I find this hilarious because, compared to the British people I work with, I feel like my english sounds rude and incorrect most of the time.

Bobby and I find that, most of the time, we have difficulty understanding people not because of their accents but simply because word choice is very different here. For example, they say things like "trebled" instead of "tripled" and "courgette" instead of "zucchini". Some words have different meanings here than they do in the states. For example, the Brits call a "vest" what we would call a tank-top (and they call a "tank-top" what we would call a vest), also "pants" mean underwear here. What we call "pants" the Brits call "trousers." This can be embarrassing when I take a bunch of trousers to the dry cleaner and forget to go into British mode and tell the man behind the counter that I have 4 pairs of pants to drop off.

Sometimes, however, I do have trouble understanding people because of their accents. When Bobby and I go to the pub and I try to eavesdrop on the conversations of the older gentlemen who hang out there all day spending their pensions on Guinness and the slot machines, I have absolutely no idea what they're saying. Seriously, i'll understand maybe 1 world out of 10. They might as well be speaking a foreign language (and sometimes I think they are). For the most part, I don't have this problem with the people I work with as they speak the very well-educated english that we hear in movies, but sometimes we do hit a language bump. For example, my boss and I were talking the other day and he said a word I didn't understand, so I tried repeating it. We both repeated the word about 15 times each and I ended up writing down "work." The word he was actually saying was "walk."

All in all, I love people's accents here. I'm sad i'm past the age where one picks up accents, because it would be cool to come back to the states sounding like a Brit. I probably will, however, come back calling "pants" "trousers" and spelling things with "s"s instead of "z"s (ie organisation vs. organization).

Laura's out of vacation time....

When I got my job offer and it included 25 vacation days on top of the 8 Bank Holidays the UK observes every year, I thought I would never be able to use it all. Well, I was wrong. This weekend bobby and I planned out our holiday schedule for the rest of the year and I am completely out of vacation days. So, if you were planning on coming to visit and we have yet to discuss it in real terms, and assuming you want to hang out with me on your trip, you're going to have to put it off till next year and get your request in earlier this time!

On a side note, because bobby has something ridiculous like 32 vacation days, he still has some flexibility in his vacation planning. So, you can still come and travel about Europe with him.