Our schedule remained packed all the way up until our first weekend. I remember constantly pulling out our itinerary to make sure we were in the right place at the right time. This was often hard because Ireland uses metric or military time so I was having to count backwards on my fingers to find out what 18:00 was. It was also difficult being 5 hours ahead of everyone at home. When I was having my lunch, the sun was barely up over the South Carolina skies and no matter how badly I wanted to call my friends and family at that time, I couldn't run the risk of waking someone up. After our horrible Monday morning breakfast experience with who we referred to as the "Breakfast Nazis" in the continental breakfast area, we decided to head to the grocery store on Tuesday after our morning film festival at the Irish Film Institute. We found what we considered to be the best of the grocery stores, Dunne's Stores, which became our safe food haven for 2 weeks. We stocked up on breakfast and lunch foods and ended up cringing at the registers. We even had to pay a charge to use their plastic bags because we apparently missed the memo that you are supposed to bring your own. I became a fan of Tuc Craks (similar to Wheat Thins) and Irish Pride Whole Grain bread. This was the only decent bread we could find that did not smell like gerbil food (don't ask). Our breakfasts from there on out usually consisted of eggs, toast, or a scone or muffin from the small shop across the street and lunch was normally made up of sandwiches. Not being a huge water drinker, I had to at least have some type of carbonated beverage to go with my food. I broke down and purchased some Cokes from the store. I was surprised they even sold Coca-Cola over there and thought I had died and gone to heaven...no such luck. Referred to as a "sparkling carbonated beverage with vegetable extracts" on the bottle, Ireland's version of Coke was anything but the original formula and this granddaughter of a Coca-Cola man was severely disappointed. But my thirst had other priorities. While I did drink an insane amount of water while there (due to dehydration and just overall lack of any other beverages besides alcohol), this Southern girl struggled without my sweet nectar of life otherwise known as sweet tea. They didn't even serve iced tea in most places. I thought I could at least pull some makeshift deal and order some unsweet iced tea and pour 10 sugar packets in there. But I couldn't even get that far. Most restaurants only served hot tea and that is just not what you want to go with your Irish stew. Speaking of Irish stew by the way, that was a delicacy that I was able to sample and enjoy. Having never had a lot of lamb before, I was greatly surprised at how much I enjoyed it along with the brown bread which actually tasted a bit like cornbread. I also got a fantastic sample of fish and chips. But you're probably wondering what I thought about the authentic Irish breakfast...well I'll tell you. It's for the birds. I loved the sausage and the bread. The bacon (they call it rashers) was a little too pink and fatty for me. They also don't really like to scramble eggs over there, but I at least tried an egg variety that I never had before. I only got the small Irish breakfast which consisted of sausage, bacon, toast, egg, and two pieces of blood pudding which if you know me at all, you know I didn't even bother. The full Irish breakfast consisted of all of the above along with tomatoes, mushrooms, and beans. Not what you would typically think of to go along with your morning paper, but to each his own.
We did manage to find an amazing Italian place ( I know I went all the way to Ireland to eat Italian) called Pacino's that we went to twice during our stay. Some of the other places we ate were late-night "soak it all up" haunts that served up Ireland's version of good ole' American food. One night was Ray's Pizza, a plateful of grease that I just could not bring myself to touch. Another night brought us to Rick's Burgers, which used authentic Irish beef in a burger the size of my head. (pretty delicious though I must say). Our final night/morning in Dublin, we ate at Eddie Rocket's (similar to the Johnny Rocket's of Greenville). And yes, we did step into a Burger King or two while we were there.
There was a point during one of our grocery shopping trips that I came across a pre-packaged meal that had a label on it saying "Southern Fried Chicken Dippers." Well you know I couldn't just pass that up. I was anxious to see what Irish people perhaps thought southern fried chicken tasted like. Well I'll go ahead and tell you it was nothing like the Colonel dishes out. I went through 3 bottles of water trying to digest just 2 strips. That was the spiciest chicken I have ever had the misfortune of eating. Apparently they were leaning towards more of a Southern Louisiana cajun style chicken but there was nothing southern or fried about it. While it did make for a funny experience, I still can't help but feel that taste in my mouth every once in a while since being back and running for a glass of tea.
Needless to say, there weren't a lot of food options and we all agreed Ireland is basically on a strict liquid diet. But I had a Chick-fil-a sandwich and an extremely large sweet tea waiting on me when I landed in Greenville last weekend and it made the wait so worth it.
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