Ireland 2021 Day 5: September 13

Bright red meat—lots of it—slab upon slab of what looked to be lamb chops ready to be individually cut, sides of beef that were waiting to be cut into steaks and roasts; in other displays fat, linked sausages spilled out over the sides of their trays. The displays of meat for sale went on and on. At one point I said to Jim, those huge cuts of meat look like they should be delivered to a restaurant (and I found out later, through a Wikipedia site, that some of them probably were). We had already noticed some vendors selling prepared food: a café with all kinds of lovely scones and pastries (but no empty seats where we might sit to enjoy their wares), a long buffet supervised by employees who were helping customers with purchases of spicy green and red curries and other Indian-inspired luncheon items. We walked on down the aisle of the market and walked into the produce section. Fruits and vegetables alike looked polished and bright, ready to eat. The smells from dark sweet cherries, and red and black small plums and bright yellow peaches with beautiful pink “cheeks” finally overwhelmed me. Two of those peaches would be mine! I could just imagine the luscious juice when I bit into them.

We finally reached an area of the market that clearly was not open for business, but, instead, was being used as storage for more produce. As we turned to walk back through the aisles, we entered the fish market. Oh, my, if a person likes fish, this place would be a paradise of sights and smells, but for the visitor who doesn’t necessarily like “fishy” smells, it was a place to hurry through. We came to a branch that veered off to the right: it was the poultry section; chicken, duck, and turkey were displayed in all their naked skin. Such sights are not my favorite, just like the fish didn’t seem too attractive to me. Closer to the entrance, we found a sundries store, just the kind of place that I wanted to browse. It seemed that if I could name it, I could find it: soaps, boxes of tea, decorative home items, tins of biscuits (cookies), candles, spices, dried pastas and legumes. I lingered long over some gift-boxed handmade soaps, but finally decided against them—Jim was impatiently waiting outside the entrance for me.

This was day 5 of our Ireland experience. We had set out that morning from our B & B in the Killarney area and had traveled just about due east for almost two hours to the city of Cork. We saw the signs for Blarney Castle but had already decided that that particular tourist attraction was not for us. We were more interested in the countryside and the villages that the Castle where you pay to kiss the Blarney stone. When we had arrived in Cork and had found a car park close to the downtown area, we discovered we were only a few blocks from the English market, which was out destination. That’s where we had been to see all the meats, produce, and sundries. A local had told us how to get to the market: “Cross this street; to the left of the store directly across from here, go through the alley. When you are through it, cross the street and almost directly across from the first alley, enter a second alley. When you see the sign for the Swarovski store, turn into the arched doorway right before it—that’s the entrance to the market.” And what an entrance it was: the beautiful arched ceiling was at least three stories high and seemed much too elegant for butchers’ shops, produce vendors, and a fish market.

An amusing event occurred while we were in the market: needing to find a “toilet,” as the English, Scottish, and Irish call their restrooms, we inquired and were pointed to a sign that led to a small, rather dimly lighted hallway. A gentleman was waiting at a single door, doing little hopping steps as a person might who really needed to use the restroom. He engaged Jim in a little masculine humor about the needs of men who were a little older than some and who might need a restroom urgently. Finally, a person came out of the door and the man went in. When he came out, Jim went in (the older gentleman syndrome applied). When he came out, I went in, thinking that the door was automatically locking as it closed. I was too caught up in trying to see in an extremely dark blue ultraviolet light that was the only illumination in the room and seemed to serve the purpose of disinfecting the place to notice the lock. Suddenly the door opened, and a young man walked halfway through the door before he noticed that I was standing there. Embarrassed, he apologized and hurried left, and Jim yelled at me to find the lock, which I did. Everyone needs a toilet, and to have only one unisex toilet for the whole market seemed totally inadequate, but such was the case.

Walking back through the alleys, which were really brick-paved narrow streets with shops ranged all along both sides, we found a little café that served wonderful fruit scones and hot black tea. Since the weather was clearing and the wait person had dried both tables and chairs, we decided to sit outside. Another amusing incident occurred when I bobbled my knife and dropped it. It fell right through a narrow grate into a storm drain! When we were finished, I said to Jim that I would go inside and explain what had happened to the knife and offer to pay for it. But as we stood up, we both noticed the knife had fallen upright into the shallow drain, easily retrievable. A good end to a good respite from our walks of the morning.

Our next stop was the Cork Airport, which we had targeted ahead of time as a place where we would be able to get the Covid test that we needed to clear US security on our way out of the country in just three days. All the online sites had warned US passengers to get the test 72 hours of departure. We were doing our due diligence. It would take several more paragraphs to explain our hour-long ordeal of filling out forms on our phone to “book” an appointment at the very place we were sitting in our car. A wonderful Irish health worker helped us so much; he kept saying, “Take your time; don’t panic; you’re in Ireland.” A wonderful reminder to us. An hour of booking, five minutes of another health worker’s prepping to swab up, a minute for each of us to “give” the throat and nose swab, and we were on our way, having decided that we needed to hit the road for the three-hour trip to Dublin and our final B & B destination in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced something like “dunlarry”). And even though the location was down a very narrow street that sometimes required the driver to back out to the end of the block, we were glad to arrive at the late Victorian rowhouse that would be our home for the next three days.

Work Consulted

“English Market.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Market

Last updated July 11, 2021.

“How to Pronounce Dun Laoghaire (Correctly).” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGFoDQ-U38

Last updated July 29, 2021.