Ireland Part Two: the empress's new clothes & the reign of markets

Cork City Shopping

Waking up at the Imperial Hotel in Cork City with no clothes wasn't the result of a torrid love affair. Rather, it was waking up to deal with the fact my clothes were gone because they'd been stolen (see Ireland Part One).  Regardless of our predicament, The Imperial Hotel is beautiful and historic, in fact, Charles Dickens had once been a guest.  It's outfitted in dark wood, marble, and fresh flowers.  Regretfully, I didn't photograph it, but I was trying to conserve my camera battery until I could get a replacement charger.  

In Drogheda, I had managed to buy some knickers and toiletries, but still needed some clothes to see me through the rest of the trip.  The woman managing the front desk at The Imperial kindly recommended a store called Penneys which carries inexpensive knock-offs of current fashions.  It was near the hotel, so I went there directly and spent the next hour trying to figure out European sizes and squeezing myself into the trendy "super skinny jeans" which were the only jeans available at Penny's.  I had never before dared to put on a skinny jean, but I was cornered.  Much to my surprise, I liked the tight, stretchy Mick Jagger pants and bought four pairs in different colors.  I owe a huge debt to the thieves who took away my tired boot leg jeans and forced me, legs first, into becoming a nouveau hipster.  

Enough about skinny jeans, Cork City is actually about food.  It is in fact, the culinary mecca of Ireland.  The famous English Market is nestled in the heart of the downtown, and houses vendors selling seafood, produce, meat, poultry, spices, baked goods, and chocolates.  It reminds me of The Pike Place Market in Seattle, one of my other favorite places on Earth.  The name, English Market, seems odd in Ireland, but it goes back to the earlier history of the city.  It was established in 1788 as the Grand Parade market by a Protestant (English) corporation that controlled commerce in the city.  At that time, Catholics were not allowed to be vendors at the Grand Parade. In response, Catholic vendors established their own market in the city, named St. Peter's Market.  Eventually, the two markets came to be known simply as The English Market and The Irish Market.  In the long run, only The English Market survived.  However, by the time the Irish Market closed, Catholics had gained full membership to The English Market.  It still stands today as a home to all the regionally procured treasures that make Ireland special to food lovers.

The market is also home to the esteemed Farmgate Café.  The cafe is on the second floor of the market with a layout allowing diners to look down on all the goings-on of the market as they savor their meals.  Farmgate is revered for their take on simple, traditional Irish food prepared from locally sourced ingredients.  Lucy and I had lunch there, and we could have ordered anything off the chalkboard menu and been outrageously pleased.  We both ended up choosing the Irish Lamb Stew.  I wanted something classic and the fact that it was another chilly, rainy day beckoned for comfort food.  The stew came with a wonderful heaping of Irish mashers to go with.  

I can't write about Cork and not mention Darina Allen, one of Ireland's most famous chefs.  Darina has been referred to as the "Julia Child of Ireland" and that's probably because she is a pioneer in teaching other people to cook simple, traditional dishes using fresh local ingredients, not just in the Irish tradition, but with an emphasis on world cuisine.  She has her own cooking shows and is a renowned cookbook author. In 1983, she and her husband started the Ballymaloe Cookery School, which is located in County Cork.  The school has become one of the most famous cooking schools in Europe.  As if that weren't enough, Darina also founded the first farmer's market in Ireland.  A few years ago, I bought her cooking compendium, Forgotten Skills of Cooking, and it's become one of my all time favorite cookbooks.  Thanks to Darina, I finally learned the art of making a French Omelette.  If you love food and care about local food movements, then Darina Allen should be one of your heros.  

After Lucy and I enjoyed our comfort food, we went back to the hotel and begged the porter to draw us a map, illustrating the way out of Cork City.  We wanted an air-tight plan since getting to the hotel the night before nearly broke us emotionally, at least I was nearly broken.  The map did work.  This time we only made one wrong turn instead of several and soon we were on the N22 roller coaster towards Killarney.  I say roller coaster because this portion of the journey was our introduction to the more narrow, incredibly curvy roads of Ireland.  There had been steady, hard rains for the past couple days in Ireland causing flash floods so it was another white knuckle drive as I gripped the dashboard or anything else I could clench with my hands, listening to the side mirrors tap other cars.  Aside from the road warrior anxiety, crossing from Cork City to Killarney was a game changer for other reasons.  Ireland was already magical, but the magic takes on a whole new meaning in the western half. 

A porter's hand drawn map.  

Ireland Part One: Dublin's heart & thieves at the cemetery

I had three days notice I was going to Ireland.  My aunt called me on Wednesday evening, July 24, and asked if I would meet her in Dublin on Sunday.  Lucy had been traveling in England with a friend who had to return to the states suddenly because her husband was very ill.  The next leg of their journey was Ireland; they'd already paid for their accommodations and couldn't get their money back nor did Lucy want to go alone.  It took me about three seconds to decide.  I hadn't been to Europe since 1992 when I traveled to France as a high school student.  International travel, especially to Europe, has become a fantasy for me in recent years. Maybe my interest in Europe is related to food, but I also feel a connection to various countries because of ancestry, language study, and overall I feel like my life has been lacking in two major areas: adventure and love.  In my mind, I think I've developed the romantic notion that Europe is where it could all happen.  This time I would be going to Ireland and unlike my last trip to France, I wouldn't be wearing a fanny pack and tinted glasses.

Thankfully, I already had a passport.  I'd renewed mine in 2010, but hadn't had a reason to use it since.  So, of course, after tearing my desk apart looking for it and quickly searching the date of expiration, I nearly broke down in tears.  At first glance, I thought the small print stated it had expired in 2010.  No, not so, next line down:  expiration of 2020.  Deep breaths.  Early Sunday morning I left Minneapolis, flew to Chicago and boarded an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.

You'll know when you start walking the streets of Dublin that you're in the presence of literary ghosts. Walking into the setting for many a writer's tale always gives me that spine tingle.  Dublin is colorful, alive, modern yet ancient, artistic, and there is food and drink to complement it all. Coming from a family of book lovers, my aunt and I both wanted to visit Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library.  Being in the presence of such books in their ancient stacks aroused deep feelings of scholarly passion.  I wanted everyone in that library to clear out so I could be alone with the books, pouring over them, fingering their covers, and researching with total abandon.  However, you could only look, not touch.  Walking through St. Stephen's Green afterward helped cool me down and gave us a preview of the greens that were to come later, in the western half of Ireland.  More than once we stood with our map open, wondering which direction to head, when Dubliners kindly stopped and asked us if we needed help.  It doesn't take long to start falling in love with Ireland and its people.  

The food of Dublin is varied, like in any big city where traditional dishes mix with the worldly.  Our first night, we ate fish and chips at Leo Burdock, the oldest chipper in Dublin.  The hot fish is handed to you wrapped in news print.   When you find a spot to squat and and unwrap your present, the fish flakes apart in your fingers and melts in your mouth.  Our upscale Dublin dinner the next night was at Dylan McGrath's Fade St. Social which has both a gastro pub and a restaurant.  Dylan McGrath is a celebrity chef in Ireland and performs as one of the judges on Ireland's version of Masterchef.  We weren't seeking his restaurant on purpose, but stumbled upon Fade Street Social by chance and liked what we read on the menu. An order of tapas from the gastro pub and we were clapping excitedly to ourselves in celebration over our choice.  We were spooning dishes of shrimp tempura, sauteed spring cabbage, wild Irish mushrooms, and pumpkin macaroni.  It was delicious.

Dublin Pubs

"When I die Dublin will be written in my heart."  -James Joyce

The only cloud over my head was the anxiety I felt about the next leg of our journey which was going to be by car.  My aunt would be driving and I would be navigating because I don't know how to drive stick (most cars in Ireland are manual for fuel efficiency).  I have auto anxiety even in the states, so the thought of our taking to the road in a country where everything is the mirror opposite and round-a-bouting is constant, with my seniorish aunt at the wheel, was already heightening the need for Maalox and muscle relaxers, neither of which I had.  A few wrong turns in Dublin, but we did it. I figured out the maps and Lucy shifted gear effortlessly while keeping us in the right "left" lane.   Setting off, we were actually feeling pretty confident, maybe overly so, after our two days of navigating Dublin by foot, our mostly painless drive out of the city, and the great rapport we felt with everyone we met.  Little did we know what was to come.

Our next destination was the city of Cork, but we decided to include a sojourn that morning to the ruins of Monasterboice, an early monastic community.  The ruins include a round tower and the best preserved celtic crosses in Ireland.  The site is nestled in rolling green hills, on a one-lane road in the countryside near the town of Drogheda.  Monasterboice had at one time been captured by invading Vikings, and as we walked in the drizzling rain amongst the ruins and grave sites in this peaceful place, we were oblivious to the fact that our own belongings were being pillaged and captured at that very moment.     

"Your Charity Pray For The Souls Of..."  -grave marker at Monasterboice

When we returned to the car, nearly everything was gone.  My aunt's larger suitcase remained, but her bags containing her valuables & passport were gone.  I had my passport & valuables on me, but all my clothes and incidentals were taken.  Panic stricken, we were soon helped by the four older gentlemen who were working in the tourist booth at the cemetery.  They called the local garda for us, and two officers were dispatched to take a report and provide assistance.  In the end, my aunt's backpack was recovered by a garbage collector who found it tossed on the side of the road; it still had her passport and credit cards inside, which was great luck.  

We received wonderful help that day from all the people around us, including the garda.  Luckily, one of the officers working our case was a woman who kindly advised me on where I could at least get a new toothbrush and some underwear.  After we finished giving reports and collecting Lucy's found backpack, we got back in the car for the long, rainy drive to Cork.  It was a difficult drive, both of us having to concentrate that much harder as our minds kept wandering to the theft.  Evening was settling in as we came into Cork, the most challenging city to navigate on our entire journey.  We didn't have any maps that showed the street our hotel was on and the city itself was made up of a labyrinth of one-way streets, some of which were labeled and some which weren't.  In the end, the only thing that saved us from never finding the hotel, was stopping to ask a person for directions.  It took a few tries to find someone who was actually from Cork and knew where to go, but we made it.  After checking in, we went right to the pub for Jameson, straight and chips.   As we reflected on the day, I realized a tiny part of me might have been just a little bit thrilled something exciting had happened.  That's not to say I wasn't mourning the loss of my best bras and journals or feeling sad for my aunt's more expensive losses, but it was in fact an adventure.