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Posts Tagged “drinking”

Twenty-four hours in Dublin

0Ross • 7th Jun 2010 • Living, Thinking • , , , ,

Quick thoughts from 24 hours in Dublin:

  • I finally understand the point of Ryanair. If you are going to Dublin overnight, with a small carry-on case, the cheap, 50 minute flight from Gatwick is superb. Despite having discovered that you can catch the train to Dublin from London for £30, I’d still be tempted to fly again.
  • The city centre is flat, low-rise and lacks the impact and grandeur of Edinburgh, or, frankly, Birmingham. If you swapped out the € signs for £s and got rid of the ubiquitous Ye Olde Worlde Celtic Font (used for everything) you could be in Portsmouth, Liverpool or just about anywhere in the UK. In Dublin, the city is less about the built environment and more about the people, who  from the beggars to barmen, seem universally good humoured, friendly and delightful.
  • The Temple Bar, the short drinking and partying street, is great fun. Few people from Ireland drink there: expect Brits, Americans and a surprising number of French, all drinking stout to excess in good humour and good song.
  • The Guinness Brewery Tour is poor, but worth the €14 for the sample pint in the panoramic Gravity bar. A pint alone normally costs ~€5.50 in the fun parts of town, one effect of heavy Pigouvian taxes. The Jameson’s distillery tour is a much better tourist experience: better explanations, real human guides. Incidentally, John Jameson was a Scot.
  • Partly because of the price of the drinks, food in Dublin seems (and sometimes is) very cheap. A full Irish breakfast can be had for €5, even in a high-end café. Oysters are €10 per dozen. However, while Richard Corrigan’s restaurant at Bentley’s Townhouse does a three-course Sunday lunch for €25, the price is the only selling point. I have rarely eaten worse in restaurant of such supposed quality: they served mango sorbet in the same bowl as walnut ice-cream, made an onion soup that tasted like melted garlic butter and even managed to find a way of taking the flavour out of roast beef.
  • There is a fascinating exhibit of peat-bog preserved ancient human bodies in the National Museum, but it’s certainly not for the squeamish, and it could put you off biltong for life.

While I lack the experience to pronounce on this, I’m not sure cities are what the Irish are best at.

Storks’ Tower Tempranillo-Shiraz

1Ross • 7th Aug 2009 • Living • , ,

A small round label on the front of this bottle of rosé boasts that Robert Parker awarded it 87 points. That’s a long way up the critic’s 100-point register for a bottle that leaves you with change from a fiver. I can see why. It appears Mr Parker and I share a taste in rosé as well as a surname and an initial.

This wine is unusually rounded. Missing is the zangy, tangy, acid sweetness of many cheap pinks. Instead you get a smooth, clear but full-bodied taste; dry but not arid, flavoursome but not boisterous.

That this wine can still be grown, bottled, shipped and sold for so little (especially after our lords and masters have taken their £2.20-odd in duty and tax) is a tribute to the glory of the market economy and proof certain that value and quality are not natural opponents.

Storks’ Tower Tempranillo-Shiraz, 750ml screw-cap, currently £4.26 at Tesco, online (by the case) and in-store

Intelligent Life

0Ross • 8th May 2009 • Learning, Living • , , , , , ,

The Economist‘s persistent marketing of their lifestyle magazine, Intelligent Life, may be working on me. Occasionally, they send free copies to Economist subscribers. The Spring 2009 issue is excellent, as is the magazine’s website. Favourite bits so far:

  • Veggie recipes for meaties - I like the look of the bread soup.
  • The return of the ‘power breakfast’, with a good breakfast restaurant recommendation for Chicago.
  • A photo essay about India’s bonded labourer Dalits, which was very moving, but which I can’t find online. I may post more on Dalits. Their suffering seems so utterly incomprehensible and shameful.
  • This piece on drinking alcohol comes pretty close to my position and experience.

Counterbalanced against this, there were some poor articles too. The ‘cover story’ – on the (over)use of the word ‘iconic’ was utterly mundane.