Archive for November 5th, 2005
Wexford: Farm Shops and Citroën SM’s
Posted on November 5, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Ireland, Personal.
We spent the halloween weekend down in Rosslare. I know it is now a mini-Dublin but it’s a perfect spot for all of the extended family to meet up. There is one shop I want to mention simply because they deserve to be much better known. “Kate’s Farm Shop” is just off the Duncannon Roundabout towards Duncannon. I found it accidentally during the summer when I went for a “lets get the kids to sleep for a hour” drive.
It had been very quiet that time and I spent a good 45 minutes filling a basket full of things that I didn’t need. The shop is evenly split between a great selection of fruit n veg at the front and deli-style provisions at the back. They have tons of pastas, spices, breads, cheese, meats, grains and other speciality foods. They seem to do a lot of organic stuff and special-diet products like gluten-free ones.
Of course, it was a totally different experience on the halloween weekend. I actually had difficulty parking. When I got inside, it was jammed. And every single accent in there, apart from the girls behind the counter was south-side Dublin. It was kinda spooky. I immediately felt myself wanting to put on a strong fake Cork accent so I wouldn’t be labelled along with the rest of them. But when your basket contains olives, pumpernickle, organic pasta sauce, hummus and japanese pears, you aren’t going to avoid labelling ye langer.
Anyway, fab shop. Pay it a visit if you are in the area.
And because I am too lazy to make a separate post, can I just mention that I saw, for the second time in my life, a Citroën SM (not XM!) heading towards the ferry.
I had noticed in general the number of 05 cars in Wexford, many of which were WX reg. I even spotted a Porsche Cayenne. But they all paled by comparison to the SM. This was a low volume car developed by Citroën whilst they were in control of Maserati. It is drop dead gorgeous and many of the innovations in it were carried over to the CX. There is a great article on the history of the car here.
Yeah, yeah, I should grow up and just accept the Mondeo.
[tags]Rosslare,Wexford, FarmShop, Citroen, Citroen SM[/tags]
No Comments
Killarney, Land of the Celtic Tiger’s Aran Sweater
Posted on November 5, 2005, by Conor O'Neill, under Ireland.
After Caroline’s wedding, we hung on for another day in Killarney to get a break from our four darlings. I think maybe I had passed through once before but could remember nothing of the place so I had no expectations. OK, I did assume we would find a certain level of paddywhackery but jesus, it turned out to be Brigadoon transplanted.
I have never ever seen so many shops selling such tat in all my life. They make the shops in the streets around Notre Dame look like high quality purveryors of objets d’art. I could have dressed as a full leprechaun in any of about thirty shops.
I had thought that the older generation of Irish-American immigrants had started dying out or at least were getting too old to travel. So I assumed the demand for this sort of “darby o’gill and the little people” “top o da mornin to ya” shite had died off. I was obviously wrong. These shops wouldn’t be selling this rubbish unless someone was buying it.
There are signs of hope. The Murphy’s Coffee and Ice Cream shop is a branch of the one in Dingle (sorry I of course meant An Dingle Dangle Dongle Ui Cuis) and serves fab stuff. And there is, em, well, em, oh yeah, the factory outlet mall and the, oh ye know, the, eh, gimme a sec, the, of course, the Supermacs in the garage.
I did realise there that there is one opportunity being missed by all the pub chains operating on the continent. One of them needs to open an Irish Pub - in Ireland!
I have to sign off now and go polish my pot o gold at the end of the rainbow.
[tags]killarney, ireland, tourism, paddywhackery, leprechauns[/tags]
No Comments
