Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Lad, you've clearly not been there lately. Every village my wife and I drove through two years back had some sort of USian fast-food store. She even sampled the MacDonald's cuisine in Dublin while I went out to view the Larkin Monument. Pizza Hut and MacDonald's are the most common, but others are encountered quite regularly. Mark, Don't know where you were but I just got back from Ireland a week ago. We only encountered two Mc Donalds, one in Shannon and one in Waterford. We didn't go into Dublin. The only other fast food place that we saw was the Irish owned Supermac. As for the food in general at the B&B's the breakfasts are usually the same, eggs, sausage (english type bangers, terrible tasteless things), Irish bacon, AKA ham, toast and home made bread (great). Lunch usually in a pub along the road, burgers, shepherds pie, fish all good. Dinners great steaks everywhere, good fish, only had lamb once (not very good). If you order shrimp cocktail it comes with Mary Rose sauce which is 1000 island dressing. The Irish don't seem to know how to use spices, everything is fairly bland, but portions are ample. If you like a soft drink with your meal you will be charged 2 euro for each 7 oz Coke in the pubs, if you're not crazy about stout, lagers are available in almost ever pub. You can also find Italian and Chinese food in most larger towns. As far as driving is concerned get ready to have your heart in your throat, the roads are narrow, there is usually no shoulder and the stone walls come right up to the edge of the road. Also the road signs will tell you which direction to go but not how far it is to the turn, sometimes 100 feet sometimes 1/2 mile. Also speeds are listed in MPH and distances, (when posted) can be in Km or miles it's your guess. If you are going to do some of the main tourist drives, Kerry or Dingle, make sure you travel in the direction of the tour busses, meeting one of them going the opposite direction on those narrow curvy roads is an experience not to be repeated. Another problem that I found was that many great picture ops. were missed because there was no place to pull off the road to get the shot. Picture yet to be scanned. Neal F - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html