APAT Cork: Friday, 23rd September 2011
Insofar as I hadn’t been visited by the beverage ursine (that’s the Drinking Bear to the uninitiated), I awoke quite refreshed on Friday. The first order of business was to whip out my dongle and complete my usual morning procedure….checking the APAT boards.
It’s a tough business looking for for anything I can delete, move, moderate, edit, censor or otherwise fiddle with…heh. OK, I just read what was on there, although I did ban a couple of spammers so the whole morning wasn’t a complete waste.
Whatever, I took the shuttle into Gatwick fairly early for the flight. The good thing (if there is one) about Ryanair is that you’re pretty much required to check-in well in advance. So there’s no long line to check-in to navigate and you can just roll on through security and head straight to the bar.
That is if you don’t forget to take your phone out of your back pocket. Sigh…I’d got everything else sorted but in doing the “jacket-off” / “belt-off” thing I forgot to un-IT.
Not a huge issue, I got a perfunctory rub-down from the security guy. If that had been the TSA I suspect I would have had the whole ‘cavity search’ / ‘sexual assault pat down’ that I’ve heard about. Thank the stars that the UK lads are less ‘gung-ho’ than their US associates….You have been warned.
With the morning frottage over I headed straight into the Wetherspoon’s on the upper floor and order the biggest breakfast I could see on the menu and a pint. Glorious!
Free wi-fi as usual in the Wetherspoon’s and I was able to catch up the few minutes I’d missed on the interwebz since leaving the hotel. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything to moderate so I just had to settle for breakfast.
I’d wrapped myself around brekky and was contemplating the next pint when Rich “Curlage” Baker arrived, pretty much on schedule, and got one for me…Score! We, as we generally do, put the world to rights before being joined by Don Roberts and his mates, Lee and Paul.
Before long we headed off to our gate, queued (as you do) for boarding, before making the long trek across the tarmac and boarding the plane. I jammed myself into the closest seat to the back of the plane that I could and settled in. As usual, I couldn’t understand a word of any announcement made over the intercoms. It was either a combination of the Irish accent (spoken at a fast pace) or the unintelligible Eastern European accents sported by the rest of the cabin crew.
Of course, it didn’t really matter to a season traveller like me but I did see more than a few confused looks on other passengers’ faces and I could hear ‘What did she say?” more than once.
An uneventful, if a little bumpy, flight and we were into Cork Airport in about an hour or so. No hassles with the disembarkation or, perfunctory, border/customs check. Richard and I had somehow managed to lose Don and Co so, after waiting a few minutes; we jumped in a taxi to our hotel.
The taxi driver seemed to be a frustrated tour guide and gave us a little history and geography lesson on the way into Cork which made the time pass. Even so, it was probably only 10 minutes and we were dropped off in front of Hotel Isaacs. Cab fare was around 16 euro.
Richard and I checked in and arranged to meet (as I thought) in the lobby a little later once we’d settled in.
We headed up together to and encountered a somewhat small lift. Once Richard and I were inside we half expected the lift to request that 3 of us get out. In fact it was only rated for 3 people…we may have strained that limit a bit. Nevertheless, we had no issues.
My room was a decent size with a double and a single bed (I hadn’t ordered the extra bed), a desk area (which was kind of tucked away) and a small CRT telly (which I wouldn’t be watching).
The remarkable thing you noticed on entering was that one wall (onto the hallway) as made of glass bricks! Now they gave you curtains you could draw so no-one could see in…but you have to wonder a the architect’s thinking there.
Once I’d washed the travel grime off and gotten the IT kit up and running, I headed down to the lobby. No sign of Richard and I sat there for a couple of minutes reading before the fellow on the desk told me that Rich has left a message that he was in the bar.
Face-palm! Of course he was. Why didn’t we just set that as the meeting place? I‘d assumed that we’d both meant the lobby….but clearly Richard has anticipated me.
I wandered into the bar…no sign but I kept on going out into the open-air area outside and there he was, accompanied by….the ‘irritating man’, Davey Pilkington.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have checked in with Foursquare and Facebook as, apparently, no later than 3 minute later Davey had come (literally) running around the corner before I’d even made it downstairs. Richard had apparently had the pleasure of being assigned a room facing on to this ‘patio’ area…nice enough except for the waterfall outside!
Looking down the courtyard onto the main street from the hotel we could see a pub, Dan Lowrey’s. This was to be our first port of call. Rich seemed quite interested in how far away it was from the hotel and so we counted out the paces. 22 was the answer…22 yards…the length of a cricket pitch or, in old money...a ‘chain’.
This seemed to be providential. The pub wasn’t huge by any means but was welcoming and the beer was a little cheaper than the hotel…not much, but a little. I did the FSQ/FB check in and texted Don where we were and it wasn’t long before his contingent joined us from their hotel (the Windsor) just up the road.
A good time was being had by all but we couldn’t come to Ireland without sampling more than one hostelry. Rich however, not had a bee in his bonnet about the ‘chain’. I mollified him by pacing out the distance to the next pub…22 yards. True ‘Chain Drinking’…Bonus!
We piled into the Shelbourne and more drinks followed and the evening continued. The primary debate though was trying to work out how many yards our hotel was away…trying to work out the hypotenuse of the triangle without the square root function on the calculator was amusing…at least it seemed to at the time.
I’d done a fair amount of scouting (via Google Maps, Street View and Yelp) for suitable public houses to visit and had high hopes of hitting all the high spots on my list; however, I had not anticipated my compatriots’ tastes turning to the ‘spicy’ side. Now as Ger wasn’t in attendance I hadn’t done any pre-planning and was somewhat in the dark on this score.
Nevertheless, we sent Dave Pilkington out into the streets to track down a suitable establishment where my associates could sate their ‘appetites’. Dave returned in short order stating that such a house could be found only a short walk away.
Apparently it was more than 22 yards away which caused some dissention but eventually we were persuaded. We headed out into the night and made our way up MacCurtain Street to a somewhat dimly lit, shady establishment. To be honest it looked pretty sketchy to me. We peered through the windows and the place seemed deserted although there was a small light on in the back.
Looking up we could see a sign advertising something called a ‘Tasty Oriental’ and this overcame any objections which might have been raised.
We piled through the door gleefully anticipating a night of abandoning ourselves to our baser instincts only to have our hopes dashed. Bloody place was a restaurant!
Frankly I would have preferred soldiering on to the next pub on my list but I didn’t want to seem unsociable. Decent enough menu although, perhaps a little pricey (but we’re in Ireland). This didn’t slow Rich down who promptly ordered 3 starters along with his main course. I managed with just once of each while others picked their dishes. They did a decent 3 course menu for 20 euro as I recall so it’s not all bad.
Food was decent but I could see it was having a soporific effect on Rich who was on the verge of falling asleep at the table. Apparently he’d been up most of the night online….degenerate!
Not much to my surprise the food knocked out most of the party and once we’d settled up Rich, Don and the others decided to call it a night. I elected to head back to the hotel with the thought of a night-cap or two but was greeted by a sing-along going off in the bar. I decided to spare my ears (and probably my sanity) and head to bed.
Pleasantly buzzed, I hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign (in case the Drinking Bear could read) and retired. I think he may have snuffled at the door but it apparently decided to spare me.
