Laundry has been the biggest hassle since being in Dublin. Complaints begin here: Merville Residences (the housing I live in) does not have its own laundrette. I walk to Glenomena Residences in order to do laundry, which isn't a long walk but I think it's the principal. There are four residences in Belfield: Glenomena, Merville, Belgrove and Roebuck. Three of them have their own laundry services. Roebuck is a few minutes walk from Merville, and Belgrove is about a 5 minute or longer walk.
Remember that small flood I told you Dublin had on October 26th? Well, Glenomena's laundry services have been shut down since then. So we're in week 3 of actual laundry hassle. Today my key card didn't work to get into the laundry room at Roebuck, so having walked to Glenomena to check if they were open, then to Roebuck for laundry I gave up. I would have had to go back to Merville to get my card fixed, and then back over to Roebuck. It's not really the actual act of doing this that makes me give up on it, I'm just tired of a simple thing like laundry continually turning into an all day process of walking all over the place to get one load done. Last time it took me 5 hours to do one load of laundry, and even then I air dried half of my clothes. That's all about that.
Complaints are over.
So, what have I done since I last wrote at you? I mentioned that I was going to Cork with Dan and Aymeric. That happened.
Cork was about a 4 1/2 hour bus ride from Dublin, so we saw a lot of good, Irish countryside. Cork is a beautiful small city. I'm not sure about the population, but I'll be honest, all the towns here are small. The first night we stayed in BruBar Hostel, which is just outside of the main city area. It was a pretty cool (although overpriced and crappy) hostel, which was above a rock bar. We hung out there for the beginning of the first night before walking down into the main pub area. Thomond's was a good, little sports pub where I tried my first Murphy's (Cork's version of Guinness). Murphy's is good. Really good. And I think I wish I could have it again, but it's tough to find in Dublin.
After that, we went to An Brog. It was a pretty decent place, but I had one of my best nights there because we walked into a set by a band from Kells called Ham Sandwich. They are one of the best indie-rock shows I've ever seen, and we had a ton of fun.
The next day we took the bus to Blarney, and walked out into the country looking for the bed & breakfast we were staying in. The family we stayed with was incredibly nice, and they even took us back into Cork so we didn't have to sit on the bus. The daughter showed us where the Crawford Art Museum was, so we went in and looked at all the paintings and saw an exhibit all titled "Gravity". After this we went to Shandon Church(St. Anne's) that has a huge bell tower that sees over the entire city of Cork. We got to play the bells with the music sheets they provided, and even climbed all the way to the top of the tower above the bells and I snapped a few pictures of the town.
The Guinness Jazz Festival was going on that weekend too, which made the town even more lively. there were stages with bands everywhere and the streets were filled with people and stands selling all sorts of things. We spent the rest of the day listening to music and wandering around the city (seeing the Cork Butter Museum but not going in, and seeing the Old English Market and St. Fin Barre's Cathedral) before going to a really nice restaurant and bar, Soho, and then hitting the town again. This time we went to Thomond's and An Brog again, but also went into Grafton's (not good craic), and then to An Bodhran.
The next day we woke up in Blarney to breakfast from the b&b. I had potato pancakes, beans and toast, and I highly recommend the potato pancakes...but do NOT put syrup on them. After that we walked the few kilometer's back into Blarney and saw the Blarney Castle and Gardens and kissed the Blarney Stone. The castle is more magnificent from the outside, and kissing the Stone freaked me out quite a bit because I had to lean out over a gap which was several stories straight down to the ground. After this we took the bus back into Cork, and went to a microbrewery called Franciscan Well that was right on the river. This place was insanely cool, and is exactly the sort of place that I love. Cobblestone courtyard in the middle where you can drink on-site brewed craft beer. I tried 3 of their beers, the Blarney Blonde, the Friarweisse and the Shandon Stout. The Shandon Stout was the best Irish Dry Stout that I've had, EVER. It may have helped that the location was perfect, and I happened to be smoking a Cohiba Cuban cigar while tasting it during the brewery's annual Octoberfest event.
There's another week that went by, and a trip to Galway and Clare...but since this post is already WAY too long, I'll go ahead and put it in another post soon.
