Ireland: Part II

I have precisely two days to finish this (as in two days it will be the weekend, my self imposed deadline).

I also would like to point out that Monday I have the day off. And it is my birthday. Normally, I like to celebrate my birthday with something low key-really I don’t even care if it gets hi jacked for something else. As long as there is cake. Chocolate cake. I will be on the hunt for chocolate cake here in Bpest. The back up plan is to buy those ‘gloried cake muffins’ that are sold at the ‘American style’ coffee shops….which are calorie laden cupcakes (really, they are worse for you than a cupcake as these shops add extra things like mix and match chocolate chips, (okay, ‘chunks’, they don’t have c-chips here), scor bits, candies, chocolate, lemon or vanilla pudding, raisons, seeds etc to make them sound more like muffins/donuts, or at least more marketable).

You are probably thinking to yourself, “this girl is crazy, she just posted about the wonders of Budapest bakeries, why is she now saying she hasn’t found chocolate cake”…well, what I mean by chocolate cake is North American Style Chocolate Cake (the moist, dense, cocoa concoction I enjoy immensely, I will also accept that Duncan hanes boxed stuff, so long as it is rainbow (a certain ex-roommate and a certain detailed oriented ‘jess learned to be attentive in the car to give last minute directions to’ friend, will understand J).

This also means, the cake must have chocolate icing not crème or fluff or fondant or sugary/caramel/off white stuff, not wafer-y, not jammy (however, I will accept a good piece of Black Forest Cake if one is able to remove all remnants of cocoanut), not rummy, brand-ish, or any type of what they call ‘punch’ here. This is one case where plane jane is essential. If there are too many flavors and textures in a good birthday you may distract the eater from the more important aspects, such as the abundance of multi-colored sprinkles or gummy worms that must be placed atop the cake.

You see? I am supposed to be posting about the Emerald Island, and got completely and utterly distracted by cake. Really, it’s very problematic. I blame the details; the details make me fly off course….sort of like now.

Okay, for real, where was I?

Dublin. Saturday Morning. We woke up at around 7 30. and had an Irish Breakfast. Literally. My yoghurt said ‘made in Ireland’ and the milk said ‘from Irish dairy cow’ and my chocolate bar said ‘made in Ireland since 1933’. I have seen this extreme form of ‘made in where ever’ phenomenon when I was in Bristol (Marketed as ‘Made in the UK, or more specifically made in the West County), in Wales, and is all over Hungary (it of course says ‘Magyar’). Basically, I think it is a response to marketing local industry and development (as a result of ECC and all) with a slight pinch of nationalism thrown in for good measure. The in-country brands are also a lot prettier to look at, which also makes me want to buy them. (I also had special K (before the chocolate bar, which I actually had on the bus), and well I forgot how yummy non soggy, crispy puffed rice could actually be and will gladly ignore any addictives required to maintain the crispy-ness).

After breakfast we went to meet Vero’s friends and our fellow travel buddies and concert enthusiasts. We walked across the river and met them at a coffee shop en route to the bus station, where we bought our tickets and waited 30 minutes to board the bus to Belfast. There I become the official translator for the trip, as well the Irish accent to someone whose English was their second (and third) language can be slightly daunting….especially when spoken quickly and when the person isn’t actually speaking too you (being able to read their lips and eye contact is very useful you see). An older women came up to us and started saying something. One of the girls I was with looked at me to translate. I smile and nodded at the older women, and said ‘she said something about missing the bus and the toilet’. That is all I understood, which also meant that at times, things got lost in translation……literally…

The bus ride to Belfast was alright. It was a bus after all. We did go through some quite little towns, and drove through parts of the country side. But then we drove on a big highway, which looked like a typical highway (except the cars are smaller and cuter).

We arrived at the train station 2.5 hours later, and when we got off we had two (well 3.5) things in mind. 1) we needed to figure out how we were going to get from Belfast to Bangor (remember, we were headed to the concert that night). 2) we needed to figure out where we were vis-à-vis the rest of Belfast (ie: were we Toronto Style (where the bus station is right down town), or were we Ottawa style (it takes a bit of walking and a cab or bus fare to get to the main Ottawa drags).) and 3) we were Hungary from lunch. (now I have attempted to improve my editing on these blogs posts. Really I have. But this last one, ‘Hungary’ made me laugh. My brain seems to be in serious Hungary overload or something….to correct it now, we were hungry not Hungary for lunch­)

Oh, the .5 is really that everyone was also very thirsty, having sat in the last row of the bus that was 20 degrees….we were all successful in obtaining water at various points of the day. The thirstiness seems to be a very salient memory…I haven’t a clue why).

So we found the place that sold the train tickets to bangor, but there was a big line. We decided to divide and conquer. Two of us went and found a map of the city, figured out where the hostel was, and figured out where we were. The other three bought the train tickets, and figured out the logistics of when and where we had to be in order to get to the park to see Lisa Hannigan and Snow Patrol (the last two acts). Can you guess what I did? I will give you a hint. My nick name for the weekend was ‘google map’. Yes, I went and found out where we were and where we needed to go to get to the hostel. I volunteered for two reasons. 1) because I don’t like standing in lines. 2)because I hate standing in lines and would rather wander. 3)I really really don’t like standing in lines. Really.

So I didn’t stand in line for the tickets, instead I stood in line at the information desk. (The lines were unavoidable)…..gah…

So with Belfast-bangor-Belfast tickets, and a map of Belfast in our hands, off we went. We decided to go to the hostel first, then get lunch, then tour the city. We found the hostel pretty easily, thanks to the fact that Belfast is very ‘grid’ like. It is small, and there are no streets or squares that are soviet style. There were some fumbles due to lack of proper street signage (but mitigated by the fact that there were 5 brains and 10 eyes able to look for the proper street). We also walked one block too far, but we were distracted by the fact that the Queen’s university Student Ghetto is beautiful.

The hostel we stayed at was called Lagan’s hostel, and for the price (13 pounds a night), it was really nice. Basic. But nice and the guy at the front desk was incredibly nice and friendly. He had a very thick accent, so I was in charge of paying attention to what he was saying (to translate). I didn’t actually mind though (as I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that I could, for the first time in one month, understand what a complete stranger was saying to me, and I could respond with more than one noun). What I like about hostels is that they are well equipped for time constrained travelers, and those travelers with budgetary constraints. And so, after a 5 minute discussion with the hostel concierge, we had mapped out a route of the city that would take us to all the hot spots, avoid all the tourists ‘traps’ and give us cheap and yummy eats.


I will end this now…and continue with Part III….you can take a break from reading too. In fact, while I support all those who read these very long detailed posts (I am a very good procrastinator you see), the only person I really EXPECT to read every word is you Catherine. And perhaps Stef too (I have tried to ensure that all details are presented in such a fashion that there is no room for unfair point scoring due to miscommunications/misrepresentation of details (such as the moon/tide semantic situation)).