Dublin Part Two

I am back from Dublin now and had a great long weekend! Here are more photos from my trip to Ireland's capital city.

Here we are at the Ha'penny Bridge.

Saturday morning we went to the Temple Bar Food Market. Everything we tried from there was amazing. We had a cronut, blueberry scone, lemon curd bar, carrot cake, and a potato and cheese pancake thing. Below are some photos of the different booths at the market. 

This next photo is of St. Audoen's Church. 

Here we are outside the stone wall.

Here is a photo of Christ Church Cathedral. It is such a beautiful and photogenic building!

This next photo is of the Fusiliers' Arch in St. Stephen's Green Park. How cool that both my maiden name (Hart) and my married name (Smith) are represented! 

We had some Murphys Ice Cream and it was wonderful! We tried samples of Lemon Curd, Toasted Irish Oats, Dingle Sea Salt, Blissful Butterscotch, and Honeycomb Caramel. We ended up taking home Honeycomb Caramel and Blissful Butterscotch for our dessert that night because both were amazing!

Here we are on the Bachelor's Walk. 

We also went to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Since photography is not allowed inside the display with the Book of Kells I don't have any photos of that. The Book of Kells contains the four gospels of the New Testament and was created around 800 AD. Two pages are open for viewing and are changed regularly. Here are a few photos of Trinity College. 

Jackie and me at Trinity College. 

These next two photos are from the Old Library inside Trinity College and upstairs from the display of the Book of Kells. 

These next photos are from our tour of Kilmainham Gaol, which has been a jail since the Victorian age and where many political prisoners from the 1916 Revolution were held. Our tour guide was really knowledgeable and the displays in the museum were also really interesting. They had some of the letters the revolutionists sent to their families before being executed which were really powerful and touching. Some of the letters were from the man who was allowed to marry his fiancee the night before his execution. 

Warren inside one of the cells. 

One of the workers at the gift shop at Trinity College was kind enough to let me take a picture with her coke bottle. How often do you come across my same spelling of Rachael? I'll tell you...rarely. 

These next photos are from Powerscourt Centre, which is a beautiful Georgian House turned mall. I've never seen a mall quite like this back home!

Warren had to leave Sunday to get back to work. Here he is on the top deck of the bus as we waited for the bus to leave to take him to the airport. 

Monday morning we went to the Casino at Marino. It was this elegant "pleasure house" (meant for parties and not living) built in the 1700s for the Earl of Charlemont who loved Italy and wanted to bring a piece of it with him to Dublin. Sadly, the house fell into disrepair and had a lot of water damage but was restored and reopened in 1984. We had a lovely guided tour of the building by an art history student from Italy. 

Some of the intricate ceilings inside the Casino. 

In order to preserve the beautiful original wood floors, they are covered with this cloth that mirrors the actual pattern. Here is a picture of the actual wood floor with the cloth pulled back. 

The restored room upstairs. 

The grounds outside the Chester Beatty Library (which was an incredible exhibit). It is typically full of people sitting on the grass but it happened to be raining so there was no one around. 

Jackie and I split this broccoli, cheese, and sweetcorn cornish pasty. Sweetcorn makes everything awesome. 

We tried donuts at The Rolling Donut. They only sell cake donuts and you can get chocolate iced, cinnamon sugar, or sugar. The chocolate iced were my favourite until I tried a warm sugar one the following morning. So good!

Every time we walked by the James Joyce statue there was a homeless person slumped next to it but on the last day I was able to get a photo sans homeless person.

This is an umbrella vending machine on the street in Dublin. Great idea, especially considering we had only a 4% chance of rain each day we were there and had two really heavy rains. 

Dublin Part One

This weekend Warren and I met up with my sister and her husband in Dublin. It feels similar to London in a lot of ways but there are some striking differences. The people seems friendlier, the buildings and streets seem grittier, and the food seems more Americanized than the food in London.

Here we are outside Christ Church. Not our best photo because it was so bright that morning.

We also went to the historic Marsh Library where we experienced an accent incident. I asked about the white books and the worker thought I asked about the weight of the books. No matter how many times I said white, he heard weight. But I didn't catch on to the fact that our pronunciations were different so it was never resolved and we just had a really weird conversation.

Inside the library...

We ate at this famous fish and chips place called Leo Burdock. The fish and chips were amazing! Probably better than what we've had in London.

 Here is a closer look at our gorgeous lunch.

I will still be in Dublin a few more days, but Warren had to get back to work. So more photos of Dublin to come later this week...

Queen's English as a Second Language

I have been keeping a list of words that Brits use that are different than what I am familiar with. They include:

Parade--a street of shops, as in "Marylebone has a nice parade."

Engaged--occupied, as in "This toilet is currently engaged."

Full Stop--period, as in "my blog site is smith and chips full stop blogspot full stop com" or "I don't like to lose. Full stop."

Pants--underwear, as in "always wear a clean pair of pants" (and don't say that you left something in your other pants)

Trousers--pants, as in "these wool trousers aren't lined"

Waistcoat--vest, as in "Shouldn't Warren buy this awesome jacket and waistcoat?" (he didn't)

Vest--sleeveless undershirt, as in "we don't sell vests here, we are a suit store"

Aubergine--eggplant, as in "We had aubergine and courgette for dinner"

Courgette--zucchini (see above)

Franked Mail--mail where a machine prints the postage without a stamp, see photo

Anti-Social Behaviour--harassing or aggressive behavior, as in "Anti-social behaviour will result in an £80 fine."

Something else I think is interesting is the crosswalks. I was surprised to find that London is not a very pedestrian friendly place, as I had expected. It really encourages jaywalking because there aren't very many crosswalks and if you find one it takes forever for the light to change. I filmed one type of crosswalk called a zebra (pronounced zehbra) crossing by Londoners. Hopefully the video comes through. When the lights are blinking it means that the pedestrian has the right-of-way. But it can be really hard to tell when they are flashing on a bright day.

Another strange phenomenon is the types of American tv shows they play here. I made a list when we were in our temporary housing and had tv. I will say that not all the American shows they play here are outdated but I am still surprised at what I've seen so far.

Melissa and Joey
Fear Factor
Murder She Wrote
Heidi
Frasier
Three Men and a Baby
MASH

And speaking of tv...Downton Abbey started back here Sunday! The first episode  was an hour and a half!

Maida Vale

We live on the outskirts of an area called Maida Vale and today I walked down to the main street in Maida Vale. 

The main street is quite small but has some nice speciality shops. One shop is a fruit and veg store called Clifton Greens. It was a lot bigger than what I was expecting for a store that sells nothing but fruit and veg. They had a great selection and the prices weren't unreasonable. 

There is also an organic butcher shop called Sheepdrove Organic Farm. 

They have a wide range of sausages in addition to their regular meats. Pork cumberland sausages are really popular here. We have been eating them with breakfast almost every day since we moved to our flat. Here is the list of sausages and some cheeses they had posted outside the shop for all the foodies. 

I've noticed how well taken care of most public spaces are here. There are loads of displays of flowers on public streets and roads. I found a couple of examples of this on my walk today. First is a typical hanging pot of flowers you see all around the city. We have these just outside our building on the main road. 

Just to be sure you can tell how big these are, I took a closer picture. I can't tell you how many times I've told Warren I'm sure it is raining and then realize I'm standing under one of these that has recently been watered. 

Another example that I found is this green space in the middle of a roundabout. It has the same flowers repeating three times so it looks the same from each entrance to the roundabout. 

I also went in to the Maida Vale library which may actually be closer to me than the one I have been going to in Paddington.

The Maida Vale library is a really cool looking building and is larger than the one in Paddington. But I realized one feature of the Paddington library that I really like is that the children's library is in a separate building. The Maida Vale library was super loud with loads of kids and strollers. They even had a separate Quiet Room for people to sit and read or use their computers.

Since libraries here charge you to send books to different library locations I think I will be utilizing all the libraries within walking distance to get my books. This one in Maida Vale had a very nice selection of travel books so I'm sure I'll be back soon!

Marylebone High Street

This last week Warren was in Paris for work and brought me macarons! He brought me lemon, raspberry, strawberry, coconut, vanilla, pistachio, and chocolate (which I think he brought for himself because he knows I don't like chocolate and figured I wouldn't share the others. He was right.) I think lemon, pistachio, and vanilla were my favorites but they were all really good. 

Then today we walked to Marylebone High Street for some shopping and dinner. We started at the Cabbages and Frocks Market and found more macarons. They were incredible! We tasted samples of Cucumber and Spiced Roasted Pumpkin and bought Elderflower + Fresh Mint and Apple + Cinnamon. They were really flavorful and I wanted to go back and get one of each kind that was left but Warren reminded me that we still have more at home that he brought back. I guess we'll just have to go again to try some more. Here is a picture of the booth but as you can see it was pretty picked over by the time we got there. 

We went to a bookstore called Daunt Books which is well known for their amazing travel section that covers the entire top floor. We bought a book on London that includes maps as well as blank sheets to log restaurants and favorite sites. 

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Osteria Ambrosia. I ordered bruschetta for the appetizer and Warren got calamari. For dinner I had risotto with mushrooms and Warren had chicken wrapped in parma ham with zucchini. Typically Warren's food is always better than mine but not this time. My food was really awesome and his was lackluster. Here is a picture of my bruschetta which was by the far the best part of the whole meal. It was really well put together and the balsamic vinegar was delicious. 

We walked to the Baker Street station and took the tube home rather than walking back since we had purchased some groceries and needed to get them in the fridge. I thought the station was really cool with some old details still intact.

 

One feature of London that we didn't have back home in Nebraska is these underground restrooms on the street. We happened across this one on our way back to Baker Street. It costs 50p (80 cents) to use the facilities.

 

Japanese Sweets

I mentioned in an earlier post that there are some Japanese sweets that my sister really likes that are sold here in London at Minamoto Kitchoan (they also have stores in New York, San Francisco, and several other countries). I thought I would expand on them a bit and show some pictures. 

This first one is called Mamedaifuku. 

It is a kind of rice cake filled with sweet beans. Here is what the inside looks like.

Here is Jackie enjoying her Mamedaifuku.

 This next one is called Kusamochi.

It is a soft, chewy Japanese rice cake that is flavored with an herb called Yomogi. It is filled with red bean paste which I tried to capture in the next photo but it is still kind of hard to see. 

 Here is Jackie from an earlier trip after we told her the kusamochi looked like a big green tongue.

These next three photos are of Hakutou Mochi. The wrapping was so nice on this one!

Hakutou Mochi is a sweet white peach bean paste wrapped with soft rice cake. 

Here is what the inside filling looks like. Jackie had me try a bite of this one since she hadn't gotten it before but I still did not care for it. There is something about the texture that I don't like.

This next one is called Sakuramochi and is made of sweet glutinous rice and filled with a sweet red bean paste and is wrapped in an edible pickled sakura leaf. 

This last one is a chocolate crunch mochi. This one also came in nice packaging.

I had a hard time finding a description of this one online (which is what I did for all the others) but Jackie said it was really chocolatey but she wasn't a big fan of the crunchy outside.