You are welcome to read about this trip to Ireland in reverse order, blog-stylee, but you might prefer to start with this preamble and work forwards.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
Tag: Dublin
Ireland With Dumbo Day Four – 10 May 2015
Not too early a start, headed off circa 10:45 after hearty breakfast. An iffy weather day. Daisy insists on continuing to do the driving so I can navigate. Good roads down to Cork/West Cork. Get some petrol at the last chance saloon on the motorway.
Get to Enniskeane and call Helga (Auberjonois), who explains that Enniskeane is her postal town, not really where she lives – perhaps she should have explained that to us earlier – but between her attempts at navigation (the hamlet name, Kilcolman, was no help for the satnav) and some common sense, we found her place soon enough.
The four photos that follow are from Janie’s iPhone while we were at Helga’s lovely place.
We spent a few hours enjoying a lovely smoked salmon lunch and then onto Inchydoney Island only 20 minutes or so further on from Kilcolman. It looks like a super place with very friendly staff. Plugged for a lighter meal in the pub of the hotel/spa, although the portion sizes were large. Daisy had an open sandwich of tiger prawns. I had “Singapore noodles” with duck confit legs and we shared a profiterole desert.
Early night.
Ireland With Dumbo Day Three – 9 May 2015
Hearty breakfast at Fitzwilliam, then off to do our own walking tour of Dublin.
First stop, the camera shop, where we got Daisy a pair of binoculars and soft case for her camera. Then on to the recommended gent shop, Louis Copeland, where Ged got himself properly togged out with trews and belts. While they were being altered, we did the rest of Grafton Street, O’Connell Street and looked at The Abbey and The Gate theatres, the cathedral and then back taking a short detour to McDaid’s for a quick drink.
We grabbed the swag and dumped it at the hotel and then out again to look at the pictures around St Stephen’s Green – Janie took to Liz Leavey’s work and indeed Liz herself. Walked to Merrion Square and then back round the other side of Trinity supping coffee outdoors in a nice place and then buying a cardy for Daisy and a scarf for Ged. We visited at the Sheridan’s cheesemongers before returning to get dressed up for the evening.
Then off to walk to Bernard & Siobhan’s house, which is in the shadow of Lansdowne Road Aviva Stadium, Vavasour Square, southeast of town out towards Sandybanks. It took about 30 minutes to walk and they seem surprised we’d walked it despite the lovely weather.
We met the little ones and then headed off in a cab for a quick pub stop almost by the Merrion, O’Donoghue’s, and then on to L’Ecrivain restaurant for a fine meal. Lobster starter (apart from Daisy who had foie gras) then main course of turbot for Ged, pork for Daisy, some other fish for Bernard, chicken for Siobhan – who also had a chocolate desert but the rest of us felt full and just finished our wine. Cabs from Baggot Street home a full but very enjoyable day.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
Ireland With Dumbo Day Two – 8 May 2015
I’d booked the 11:50 ferry so there was no real rush to leave The Quay. We aimed for a 10:15 departure, managed 10:30 after a hearty smoked fishy breakfast.
Easy run to Holyhead though and enjoy the benefits of “club class”, being waved through onto the ferry ahead of the rest. It all seemed very well organised.
Club class threw food and drink at you, not that we needed it – note for our early morning return leg. A very gentle ride – less sway than a Palladino train – even though it was heaving with rain.
Arrived in very wet Dublin – trusty satnav taking us to the Fitzwilliam quite quickly. Surprisingly pokey room for the superior price, following a long wait for the room to be made ready – spent 1430 to 1530 chatting with Patrick the concierge. Also freezing cold room and this was explained as eco-policy to keep the heating off until 20:00 – agreed to turn it on at 18:00 and provide us with an oil radiator rather than the poxy fan heater they originally offered.
Feeling quite miserable, we ventured off in the rain to catch the Book of Kells before closing time. We wandered back via shops, Brown Thomas for example.
The radiator still hadn’t arrived by the time we got back, so I got onto the guest relations manager, Jaarko, who ran around sorting some stuff out for us and apologising profusely.
We took dinner in Citroen, the mezzanine restaurant, where the food was very good. Daisy had beef (steak-like) with the marrowbone and I had gigantic prawn skewers – no starter or desert – but Daisy had Irish coffee in the bar, while I finished off the wine. The Fitz insisted on picking up wine bill for our trouble earlier which was nice but we prefer to buy our own wine and have no trouble.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
Ireland With Dumbo – 7 May to 19 May 2015 – Preamble
With my mother’s condition worsening over the autumn of 2014, we made no plans for a holiday proper but did plan at least to go walking in Ireland. After mum’s passing in early 2015, we briefly considered more ambitious plans but then thought better of it; I/we had been through enough and had lots still to sort out. The plan to walk in Ireland come springtime was still a sensible one.
Glossary for less-informed readers: Ged and Daisy are long-standing nicknames for me and Janie. Dumbo is my little Suzuki Jimny. He joined the family in September 2014; this trip to Ireland was his first serious journey with us.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
A Week In Ireland (Dublin & Cork) With Bobbie Scully, 22 to 28 May 1992
I took no photos and I wrote no journal during this week off, which makes it hard to retro-blog the visit all that much.
It returned to my mind in December 2021 when writing a vignette, Deeply, inspired by Rohan Candappa’s adverb colander:
In fact, that vignette contains most of the specific things I remember about that trip, other than the following scant details:
- We flew from London to Dublin, took the train from Dublin to Cork and back, returning to London by plane from Dublin I’m pretty sure;
- We stayed in modest hotels in both cities. I don’t recall any high-class meals in Dublin – but I do remember eating and drinking well. We had a good time;
- Although Bobbie has/had kin in Ireland, I’m pretty sure we didn’t visit any of them – we basically just looked around Dublin and then looked around Cork;
- I was still struggling a bit with my back (from the major 1990 injury) and we sought out swimming pools in both cities, with reasonable success;
- In addition to the football match night contained in the Deeply vignette, I also recall the following night, our last, when we ate at the Arbutus Lodge, a rather grand place which had a Michelin star at times and thus we ate a degustation menu at (by Irish standards but certainly not by London standards) enormous expense.
Bobbie might remember some other details and chip in with them – if so I shall add them of course.
That Deeply Vignette Replicated
I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche. The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992.
Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland. I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.
That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons.
Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team. Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.
A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.
Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.
The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.
By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.
As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.
There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.
At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.
Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.