Dublin notes

[I spent about a month in Dublin this past spring, and wrote most of this post then. I figured it's high time I got around to publishing it.]

What I enjoyed most about this stay in Dublin were the little bits of daily life: the grocery stores, the pubs, the friendliness of the people. Spending hours wandering around a giant bookstore full of English books. Cheddar cheese. But naturally I fit in couple touristy adventures, too. We hit several of Dublin's big sights on our first trip to Ireland, but there was still plenty left to see this time around.




Dublin Sights

Kilmainham Gaol - This no-longer-in-use jail is slightly outside of town, but worth a trip if you're interested in learning more about Ireland's political history. The tour was informative and interesting.



Old Jameson Distillery - The €13.50 entrance fee feels like kind of a rip-off, especially since real distilleries tend to charge much less if anything at all. But if you're up for a Disneyfied version of a whiskey tour, it's definitely a good time. Be ready to volunteer enthusiastically when they ask for tasters near the beginning of the tour - everyone gets a shot of Jameson, but only a chosen few get to do the taste-test comparing American, Irish, and Scottish whisk(e)ys.



National Gallery - this art museum has a fabulous collection of old masters, impressionists, and Irish paintings. And free entrance! But the best part was the security guard who out of the blue just wanted to let me know that I was "very welcome" in Ireland. When was the last time a German said something similar to you, I ask?

Gogarty's - in the center of Temple Bar, Gogarty's offers live Irish music every night of the week in the cozy upstairs bar. Touristy, yes, but the craic is still excellent. Drinking Irish ales by the pint is part of the full cultural experience, which you will surely want to have. Actually there are tons of pubs that offer free live music all over Dublin, so don't feel like you have to stop at just this one.



Hugh Lane Gallery - a fabulous little art collection plus an excellent exhibit (including his reconstructed studio) on Francis Bacon, everyone's favorite crazy fuck artist.

Book of Kells - Em dragged me here. The book itself wasn't even on display (I think it's being restored), but surprisingly I enjoyed the exhibit, which talked about the book's history and production.



Dublin Eats

The Mermaid Cafe became my favorite restaurant in Dublin after a meal of creative, elegant food in their relaxed atmosphere (great service, too). The seats near the windows make for excellent people-watching.

We also had a nice meal at The Church, a former church which has been beautifully converted into a bar and restaurant. The prix fixe menu felt like a good value in a city as expensive as Dublin.

In more casual dining, I quite liked Juice, a vegetarian restaurant with a good selection of creative international vegetarian and vegan fare. The lunch special was a good deal.



I completely fell in love with Dublin and its people. I'd go back in a minute.

Air Berlin: a bafflingly good airline

I've flown Air Berlin several times now, and I have to admit the airline confuses me. Its prices are often excellent, especially if you book during a sale (offerings such as 2-for-1 tickets can often be found on their website). The website is functional, allowing smooth and easy purchases and online check-in. On board, passengers are treated to free drinks, snacks, and magazines, even on very short flights. No luggage charges. Seating is assigned (you can choose your preferred seat when you check in online), and no one has ever hassled me about the size or weight of my carry-on. Basically, it's everything the full-service airlines used to be, before they all turned into fee-grubbing customer-hating cesspools.



So what's the catch?

So far I haven't been able to find one. I've even called their customer-service hotline, only to find it staffed with competent, friendly people who demonstrated problem-solving skills. Sure, there are a couple small, nit-picky things I could mention (a small fee for using a credit card on the website, for example), but given the state of most other airlines these days, they hardly seem to matter.

Air Berlin flies from a ton of German cities to destinations all over Europe, plus a few farther-flung places (such as New York and Phuket).

What's your experience with Air Berlin? Are any other airlines (low-cost or otherwise) worthy of praise these days?

Porvoo: small-town Finland

OK, back to last month's trip north. The charming little town of Porvoo made for a perfect day-trip from Helsinki. It's about an hour away, and the bus service is frequent.



One of the quintessential sights of the Nordic countries is a row of colorfully-painted wooden houses, and Porvoo had plenty of them. The helpful tourist office gave us a map with a suggested walking route. It took us through the shop-filled touristy old town, along the river, and up a hill to a quiet residential neighborhood which was crowded with these cute old wooden houses in various states of restoration.



We had a fabulous lunch at Restaurant Timbaali - Scott had the fish buffet and I had a mouth-watering vegetarian dish.



After completing the walking tour we strolled through the Spring Market which was taking place downtown. There were stalls selling pretty much everything, but especially fried fish and licorice whips. We picked up a small bag of deep-fried mini-donuts to keep our mouths entertained on the bus ride back to Helsinki.

Åland by tandem

Our time in Åland was marked by dramatic, stormy weather, but luckily we had one day that was almost completely without rain. We made the most of it by renting a tandem bike and exploring several islands.

The bike only had one gear, and took a little getting used to. I dare say we looked a bit ridiculous at the start, trying to figure out in what order we needed to each get on and start pedaling and whatnot. Luckily Åland is quite flat, and we were able to make it up the few hills (mostly bridges) without needing to get off and push.



We took a rest stop for homemade cake and coffee at the only cafe to be found in this group of islands. A couple local women were inside knitting and chatting, and the cafe was full of their homemade crafts. We sat outside and pretended the wind was pleasant rather than bone-chilling. The chocolate cake was delicious.



As we pedaled back to Mariehamn along the beach, we came across a flock of peacocks. As you do.



We had fun watching two males chase a female around like something out of a cartoon - in and out of the peacock house, around and around. She'd even hide and then run the other way after the guys had run by. Meanwhile we were trying to figure out how one gets a peacock to show his tail. Do they do it when threatened? Horny? Hungry? Tired of the sun never going down? After Scott's attempts at playing an agressive rival peacock failed to produce results, we were about to give up, go back to the hotel, and google it. And then all of a sudden two of them decided we were worthy of their tail displays. Naturally that is the moment in which the camera card decided to be full.



If you are the type who enjoys cycling tours (not just day-trips like we did, but real tours), then you may want to check out Åland. The islands are gorgeous and easy to cycle (flat, very little car traffic). Plus many of the local ferries are free for cyclists. It's so tempting even I'm considering if I want to go back and do a cycling tour, and trust me, I'm not the type.

No movie theaters in Åland

I have a thing for places whose names start with Å. Take Å, for example, which we visited last year. When I read about a group of islands off of Finland called Åland, I knew I had to go there, too. I can tell you're impressed with my sophisticated decision-making process.

Åland is a group of about a bajillion tiny islands located in the Baltic between Finland and Sweden. It's officially part of Finland, but has a bunch of autonomy and is in some ways like an independent country. Enough for me to add it to my list of countries I've visited? Up for debate... Åland has its own stamps and its own internet suffix (.ax). It also has different taxation rules than the rest of Finland (allowing the booze cruise industry to thrive). Its residents speak more Swedish than Finnish.



Åland has exactly one town, Mariehamn, a bustling metropolis of 11,000 people. It's where we stayed, mainly for convenience (it's where the big ships dock, and we weren't sure if we wanted to rent a car to get to the more far-flung accommodations). Given the rainy, stormy weather we had for our time on the islands, we were happy to be in civilization, so at least we had good restaurants and other entertainment. But as the title of this post suggests, there wasn't all that much on offer.



Marienhamn has two museums, one on maritime history and one with Ålandic art and history. Unfortunately the history was not presented using very much English. While some of the art was interesting, most of it left the impression that anyone who had ever picked up a paintbrush on these islands had at least one piece in the show.



We were impressed with the quality of the restaurants in Mariehamn, where we enjoyed three decent evening meals out. Indigo came highly recommended, and delivered the tastiest food in the best atmosphere (plus it has Newcastle on tap). FP von Knorring sits on a boat in the harbor on the eastern side of the town, and served up delicious fish and vegetarian fare. A few meters away is the glass pavilion Club Marin, which lured us (me, anyway) in with its interesting-sounding vegetarian options. The food was surprisingly tasty, although the tired decor and lack of decent beer made the whole experience merely so-so.

Up next: how we spent our one day of good weather in Åland.

Stockholm. Bork bork bork.

Whenever we visit a city, Scott and I both instinctively size it up based on whether we would want to live there someday. Stockholm gets a big "yes" from both of us. It's big, beautiful, and full of stuff to see, do, and eat. Guess I have a thing for cities built on islands. The Swedish-Chefiness of the language is another added bonus (and given its similarity to German, it wouldn't be too hard to learn).



There was so much going on all around the city. Gamla Stan (the touristy but adorable old town) was hosting a music festival. A Taste of Stockholm offered up culinary delights and live music in a downtown park. On the other end of the city we stumbled upon a small free concert to bring attention to climate change and related issues. Recent graduates were joy-riding in trucks all over the place (wearing fancier sailor hats than their Finnish counterparts).



Vegetarian delights
I don't know about reindeer mousse and pickled fish bits, but Stockholm's vegetarian offerings are pretty yummy, not to mention extensive. Hermitage is located in Gamla Stan and offers a great lunch buffet (the vegetable balls were my favorite) for a reasonable price. Lao Wai is a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in a fun northern neighborhood. I wasn't so sure about the vegetarian 'shrimp', but everything else was quite tasty.



Museums
The Nationalmuseum covers the history of Swedish design (yes, including IKEA) as well as a variety of art (Swedish and other, mostly pillaged from other lands according to the audioguide). On a previous trip to Stockholm, I fell in love with the Vasa Museum, which is (literally) built around a ship which sank in Stockholm's harbor in 1628. It is a tribute to how a well-crafted museum can make me interested in almost anything. I also have fond memories of the Skansen open-air museum, for both its architectural structures and its animals (reindeer!).



We might not ever get a chance to live in Stockholm, but we'll definitely be back for a few more visits.

Scenes from Tampere and Turku

Still having fun in Finland. The middle tap dispenses something called "Long Drink". I didn't try it.

We spent an evening at Vaakahuoneen Paviljonki watching the Siberian Teachers, a jazz band. Not sure where they're from.



Turku's castle proved a nice place to hide out from the sun.

When walking down the street in Turku, one needs to watch out for balls, children, and flying cars. Children need to watch out for falling barns.


Graduation day. Sailor hats are worn by partying graduates in both cities.


Industrial Tampere.

Meat sword. At viking-themed restaurant Harald (there's one in Tampere and one in Turku). My veggie dish was good, too.

Tar: not just for paving roads anymore

Greetings from Turku, Finland, where we are trying to hide from the hot glowing ball in the sky. Not such an easy task when it is beating down on you for 19 hours a day. Not that I’m really complaining – we are still having a lovely time.



Since arriving in Finland, we have been noticing the word ‘tar’ on English-language menus here and there. “What word could they possibly mean instead?” we kept thinking, until finally we got so curious we looked it up. The Finnish word terva does indeed translate to ‘tar’. We were somewhat relieved to learn that it refers to pine tar, instead of the kind you find in cigarettes or in mammoth-eating pits, and it is used to flavor all kinds of things in Finland. Ice cream, for example, which we tried yesterday.

It tasted kind of like pine needles and mostly like smoke. Not in a delicious-12-year-old-Scotch-whisky way, but more like a get-me-out-of-this-burning-building-before-I-die-from-smoke-inhalation way. Scott and Adam seemed to enjoy it more than I did.

Flittering around Finland

I have more to tell you about Estonia, but I think that will have to wait until we get home. For now we are busy taking in Finland.



My favorite bits so far have included the local fashion (you can really imagine Lordi coming from this country) and the copious amounts of free ice water provided in restaurants.



Also intriguing is the fact that the sky doesn't get completely dark until after midnight. It's almost impossible for me to guess what time it is at any given moment (unless it is really, really dark out - then I can at least narrow it down to about a 3-hour window).

Estonia gets medieval on our asses

Greetings from Tallinn. We’ve only been here a few hours, but already we are feeling butterflies in our stomachs for this insanely adorable city. The mixture of extremely-well-preserved medieval and recently-updated buildings is irresistible, despite the fact that the place is teeming with tourists.



Because it seemed inevitable, we jumped right in and ate at the city’s most touristidisnified restaurant, the medieval Olde Hansa, for our first meal here. It exceeded all our (admittedly low) expectations, particularly in the food department. My vegetarian dish was one of the most delicious restaurant meals I’ve had in a very long time, and Scott enjoyed the duck, too. The medieval beers got mixed reviews, but the cinnamon beer was definitely the best. And the in-character serving wench was oh so endearing.



Dinner was the first time we used Estonian money. We were surprised when our change didn't include any coins; instead, the notes went down to denominations of 2 krooni (about 13 euro-cents). Estonia will start using the euro in 2011 at the earliest.

Sligo and more Irish coast

What a lovely Irish weekend we just had - cute towns, sandy beaches, and dramatic cliffs punctuated by heavy but tasty food and creamy ales. Life is good.

Our first stop was Sligo, a small city in northwest Ireland. The guidebooks had mixed things to say, but we found Sligo to be a very nice place to spend an afternoon wandering around. It was a town with personality.



When the B&B we booked fell through, we went for a last-minute room at The Glass House in the middle of Sligo. The funky architecture makes for some lovely rooms, even if they are starting to wear a little around the edges. We lucked out and got the top corner room, giving us two giant window-walls from which to enjoy the view (and the late-night fireworks).

Sligo had plenty of charming, reasonably-priced cafes and bars (including Garavogue), but all the restaurants we checked out seemed ridiculously expensive. We had a fabulous time watching the drunken locals over a pub dinner at The Ark Bar, and then retired to our room early to watch Norway sweep the Eurovision. Poor Germany couldn't even be helped by Dita von Teese.



The next day we enjoyed a big Irish breakfast before heading north along the coast into County Donegal. The drive brought us into a Gaeltacht, or region where Irish is the primary language spoken. But we heard a lot more baaing then speaking while we were there.



We also drove past several peat bogs.



Our main destination was Slieve League, reportedly the highest cliff face in Europe. The sun kindly came out for a couple hours so we could enjoy the view. While not as tidy and regular as the more famous Cliffs of Moher, these cliffs were still quite striking.



On our way back to Dublin we stopped in Cavan to find some dinner, and lucked out with our choice of The Black Horse, which had the most delicious pub grub I've ever eaten.