Details - Irish Hotels and Meals

"Bring your own washcloth; Irish hotels don't provide them," advises the CIE tour pamphlet.
Somewhat daunting was the line "each room has a private bath/shower."  Why mention this?  What else would it have?  An assigned time to use the facilities in the bar or restaurant with a special hotel-provided pass?

The Dublin hotel was the Mespril and we heartily recommend it.  A lovely large room with a seating area and big windows giving a great view of the not-a-lot of traffic street below as well as the fascination of watching the waters of the Grand Canal bobble and burble along on the other side of the road.  

The morning beverage is a variety of teas or little "straws" of instant coffee.  The "coffee pot" is a water pot and is used only for providing really hot water for tea or coffee.

The tour included breakfast and each morning we were faced with the classic Irish breakfast.  This is bacon, sausage, "black pudding" (involves pig blood,) potato cake, fried egg, grilled tomato, soda bread, toast and Campbell's Pork and Beans.  We discovered that you're supposed to put the beans on the toast.  After we got home.

The Mespil thoughtfully also sets out a platter of Italian salami, mortadella and cheese.  The other choices are fresh fruit, cereals, granola, croissants and toast.  Irish butter is delicious and we all made pigs of ourselves using lavish amounts on anything even remotely butter-able.  Condiments are little packets of mayonnaise, mustard, malt vinegar, tartar sauce and Heinz Brown Sauce.  Which I think is Heinz's 57 here.  

The foods above were not limited to the Mespil - every hotel we stayed in offered the same.

The CIE guidebook helpfully told us that it is not uncommon to be given potatoes in a number of different forms - roasted, boiled, mashed and chips (fries to us; crisps are potato chips) - all on the same dinner plate! The predominant entrees in Ireland are lamb, seasoned game and fish, none of which will I eat.  I planned to exist on Ploughman's Lunches (bread, cheese and a pickle with a small salad) and for dinner, I would magically become a vegetarian.  Happily the country is apparently awash in shrimp and lobster and that solved that problem!

Speaking of shrimp, they are called prawns despite being the size of river shrimp, most commonly used here to make pates for shrimp toast.

More good news - I loathe Guiness (prescribed for pregnant women to nourish the unborn)  because it tastes like a wet dog smells.  We got along very well in the various pubs with a Harp.  The most popular beer in Ireland is ... drum roll - Budweiser!

The only thing that Richie didn't like about the tour was this:  for a timely departure, we had to leave our bags outside our hotel room doors for the night.  One morning, Dominick has the luggage door about to be closed, gets into the driver's seat and says, "I don't know what you lot have in your suitcases, but you've damned near given me a hernia.  I'm sorry for the slow start, the lads (baggage handlers) weren't at the races this morning."

And with a subtle shift of the gears, we pulled away from the curb and set off for the southwest of Ireland.