Cooking at the Castle

On a peninsula northeast of Dublin sits a small fishing village called Howth (pronounced hote). It's a beautiful little town that has a lot to do: eat seafood, feed seals, walk along the cliffs, see a ruined abbey, and much much more. Tuesday night we had a team-building activity which involved taking a cooking class at Howth Castle.

It was a wonderful experience. We broke into two teams of eight and began cooking a four course meal under the guidance of a chef. The chef taught us how to cut, mince, stir, reduce and refresh. Our menu consisted of:

Mediterranean Feta Salad with Pomegranate
Parma-wrapped Chicken Breast with Ricotta Stuffing
Mushroom and Truffle Oil Risotto
Chocolate Truffle Torte

When we were done cooking, we sat down at the table and enjoyed the fruits of our labors. In addition to the fine dinner, we were treated to some legends of Howth Castle by it's current resident - a direct descendant of the builders of the original castle in the 12th century. The legends include a story about a female pirate abducting the heir to Lord Howth because she was offended by the gates being closed - a breach of hospitality. The heir was returned on the promise that the gates would never be closed and that the dinner table would always be set with an extra setting for an unexpected guest. The table is still set with the extra setting over 400 years later. Additionally, a new set of gates were built that could never close.

An intriguing and fun event - fun was had by all! The meal seemed all the more delicious because we prepared it.

RJ Visits the Castle

Today we took RJ out to see Trim Castle. This castle was featured in the movie Braveheart. You might remember it from the scenes where William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson, gets hung drawn and quartered by the English. What we found was that a 3-story castle presented little room for RJ to (safely) run around. Did I mention that RJ loves to run? He loves to run. He needed his "Freedom!" (the quote is to be read with a bad Mel Gibson Scottish accent).

Since I had been on the tour before, I let Beth continue on the tour and I exited with RJ before we even got off the first level of the castle. RJ had plenty of fun running around the castle grounds. As I have probably mentioned before, RJ likes to run down hills more than he likes to run up hills. Thus we ended up spending most of our time on the river-side of the castle as opposed to the curtain wall side of the castle.


We ended the day with Spaghetti Night in Navan. As you can see, RJ likes spaghetti. He even finds that it's in fashion to wear his spaghetti.

The Castles, The Wall and The Angel (Part 1)

If you want to see some freakin' cool castles, go to Northumbria, England. There are other things to see like Hadrian's Wall and The Angel of the North, both worth seeing, but the castles were absolutely phenomenal. Last weekend, I flew over to Newcastle Upon Tyne and had an interesting weekend, which included avoiding a disgruntled convict with a gun.

On Saturday, I did the all-castles-all-the-time tour of Northumbria. The first castle that I saw was on Holy Island, Lindisfarne Castle. Holy Island is an island that you can drive to at low tide. A causeway opens up, just don't get caught trying to drive across when the tide is coming in.

The town was neat and I would have liked to stay a little longer, but I had a tonne (that's the British spelling) of castles to see and only one day to do it! Here is Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island:


Next it was down the coast toTHE most amazing castle that I have seen to date: Bamburgh Castle. This one deserves two pictures.

From the park:
From the beach:


And, although I have many other pictures of castles, I cut it off after this one as it's a good one to end on. This is Alnwick Castle, but you might know by it's other name: Hogwarts. This castle was the featured backdrop for Harry Potter as Hogwarts in three of the six films already released.


After my tour of the castles of Northumbria, I toured the cities of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Tynemouth. There really isn't anything spectacular about the city other than it attracts stag parties and hen parties from all over the United Kingdom and Ireland. For your reference stag party = bachelor party, hen party = bachellorette party.

I found cheap accommodation staying in a dormitory at the University of Newcastle. I'm such an old fart. I was in bed by 10pm. I first woke when the loud and raucous stag parties returned from the pubs (obviously of the same mind for cheap accommodations) at 2:30 am. I next awoke to my alarm and to extract my revenge, being loud (though not raucous) at 6am when I got up to start my Sunday adventures.

To be continued . . .

Done Laoghaire

For over a month now, I’ve had a sunny day contingency plan to go to Dun Laoghaire. When I woke up last Saturday, the sun was shining brightly through the windows of my apartment, warming the idea of heading south and invoking my sunny day contingency plan.

I got to Dun Laoghaire via the bus and train – costing me around 4 Euro total to get there. As soon as I stepped off the train, the clouds came. To the right is a picture of Dun Laoghaire from the ferry station.

Between the ferry station and the pier, there was an interesting looking memorial that stood tall and proud, looking over the harbor. What I found was that it really wasn’t very impressive - it commemorated the first stone being laid for the pier.

Right next to it (and much smaller) was a much more interesting memorial. See the plaque below.

Before getting out to the pier, I saw a sculpture and decided to get a closer look. What I saw is below: the Christ the King statue by Irish American sculptor Andrew O’Connor. The 3 sided sculpture is 18 feet high and shows three phases of Christ’s life: Desolation, Consolation and Triumph. The side you see here would be Triumph.

On to the East Pier! (I decided that one pier would be plenty and I didn’t need to see the West Pier) The pier is a nice long walk out to the tip of the harbor. Even though the clouds had rolled in and a little drizzle began to fall, it was still a pleasant walk. I wasn’t the only person there, the pier was pretty busy. The first picture (left) is a four-legged friend out enjoying a walk. The second picture (bottom left) is at the end of the pier, looking out toward Howth Head. The third picture (bottom right) is some photogenic driftwood.

Next I walked down to a place called the 40 foot

hole at Sandycove. This is a place just off the coast where the sea drops down 40 feet. But due to the rock formations, it’s more of an underwater cliff. Apparently it’s a famous swimming hole. Believe it or not, even in late February, people were swimming. The Martello Tower to the top left was constructed years ago to help ward off Napoleon should he come to Dublin. There are quite a few up and down the east coast. This one has been converted into the James Joyce Museum. Forty foot hole is to the right and the smoke stacks in the background mark Dublin City.

Next stop was Dalkey, which was a neat little city with some old architecture. To the left is Bulloch Castle, which is now a nursing home (no kidding) and to the right is part of Dalkey Castle in downtown Dalkey. By this time the sun had come out and it warmed up.

With some time to still burn before I was due back in Dublin, I decided to walk down the coast to Kiliney Beach. I was a beautiful walk past some garish homes. Notice the second occurrence of a Martello Tower in the distance in the first picture. That is a different one.

Finally at Kiliney Beach. The views were absolutely stunning. You can easily get to Kiliney Beach from Dublin via the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) train. For just over two Euros, the train drops you off right at the beach.

It was a grand day out. Only thing left to do was to polish it off with a Guinness in Dublin while watching Ireland beat England 20-16 in rugby and go see a foreign film at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.