The Jameson Experience - Midleton, Ireland

Over the weekend, we headed out on an early Saturday morning to the Cork train station. It was a very brisk morning, overcast as usual and I was regretting not bringing a jacket. Sometimes I forget that I'm not in California anymore...

The train station was brick on the outside and modern on the inside with ticket machines and all that jazz. Jason was very fascinated by trains so we spent a few minutes before meeting the others to take pictures around the station.

The ride to Midleton was approximately 25 minutes with a roundtrip ticket costing about 7 euros per student. I've noticed that students get a lot more discounts at various venues and businesses here than they do back in the States, no complaining there.

The train ride was moderately paced and we got a good look of the countryside and greenery.

After arriving and finally figuring out the orientation of the city map poster at the train station, we headed to Main Street, which leads to the Jameson distillery. A quick word about Jameson- Jameson is a well-known Irish-produced whiskey. It has two branches, one in Midleton where the whiskey is made and aged, and one in Dublin where the whiskey is bottled and shipped out.

Before arriving at the distillery, however, we got sidetracked by the local farmer's market on the way. Here, we found small booths of ice cream, smoked salmon, meats, curry, produce, chocolates, and even flowers. Many of the booths allowed us to sample their products, which were all heavenly since we are a group of starving college students. I was lucky to sample a bite of brownie, which I can't remember if it contained caramel or not, but was the most scrumptious softest brownie I have ever had. I also tried smoked salmon and chili smoked salmon. Since we were very short on money I didn't get to buy a fillet of the chili salmon that I had really enjoyed, but more to come about that later ;)  Melina ended up getting a bowl of curry, which looked delicious and smelled even better. Jason and I shared a bowl of irish cream liqueur and brown bread ice cream, which is really quite amazing and much better than you can possibly imagine. The boys all got a nice hunk of dark chocolate to chomp on, and Alex and Andrew got a good hunk of blue cheese as well.

When we finally arrived at the distillery after much food adventures, the admission was ten euros for each of us, and after some time, we met up with our tour guide. She led us through the various distillery buildings, summarizing what goes into the whiskey, the triple distilling with the giant copper pot distillers. At the factory, each Jameson cannot be bottled and shipped until it has been aged for at least 4-5 years on average. Though a whiskey must be aged at least 3 years to be called a whiskey. Jameson also makes a special 12-year-old whiskey, which is offered exclusively at the distillery. Jason and I got a small bottle of the special 12-year-old whiskey that came in a fancy case for only 4.50 euros. The cashier dropped the case into the bag rather hard though, so neither of us know if the bottle inside is actually still intact since it's too special to open just yet. After our tour, we all received a complementary whiskey drink. I chose a mixed drink of Jameson whiskey with gingerale and lime, which tasted very well together. The guys chose to sip their whiskey neat, which I think is good too but a bit too strong for me to handle in the middle of the day...

This is me being standard tourist in front of a copper distilling pot. They had a bigger one inside that was the original. In fact, our tour guide said that the entire building had to be built around that one pot since it was so big!

So. Much. Whiskey.

Whiskey chandelier! Hope those are empty...

A look at the inside of one of the mills...

This is the water wheel that helps to power the mills. It is powered by the stream that runs under it, which you can't see from the picture.

At last our drinks! Mmm

After the distillery, we had some time to kill before heading home on the train, so we checked out a few local businesses. Mostly art galleries and antique shops. We stopped at a bookstore on Main Street for a while, where Melina and Jason read up on some Irish history and I found a good book on Irish cooking.

"All you can eat data!"---- if you say so!

Later that night after we were back in Cork, we met up later for a round of beer at The Francescan Well, a microbrew pub that is literally a five second walk from my front door. I tried my first Friar Weiss and it was absolutely the most delicious beer I have ever had. For the first time in my life I could finally understand how some guys could crave beer. I had to make sure I didn't drink it all too fast because the microbrews are quite pricey and I wanted to savor it all!

With lots of happy nommings and love- come back for more foodie adventures later!

Cheers to the Man Behind the Pint!

In case I forgot to mention this...I am VERY behind on my blogging. Therefore Arthur's day (named after Arthur Guinness, the man that founded Guinness) was actually September 27, not the posting day, October 5th. 

We both had class on Arthur's day, so here are some pictures from lunch to walking to class!

On a side note, on campus while walking to class today, Jason and I saw a fox, yes you read that right. a FOX by some bicycle racks looking rather skimpy and hungry by the food science building. We were very taken aback, and so was the Irish girl that happened upon it after us. Naturally we all pulled out our iPhones and took pictures of the poor bastard. It looked a little too hungry for us to stay longer than we had to.... 

Arthur's Day fell on a Thursday this year, and of course we all went out to celebrate. The "To Arthur" cheer was at 5:59 PM, chosen because the year was 1559. However, due to a poor sense of direction, everyone in our group missed it. We did pass by a few pubs on the way to the meeting place, An Brog, but did not hear anything significant at 5:59PM. We ended up meeting outside the post office instead on Oliver Plunkett Street, where we headed to Melina and Andrew's apartment to chat and wait for Alex until the bands started playing at local pubs. 

Typically at the pubs here, local bands come to play on various days around 10pm or later. For Arthur's Day, however, many pubs participated in a surprise guest band, where no one will know who is performing where until the night of Arthur's Day. We ended up going to Crane Lane, a quaint cozy pub in the city centre, but could not get in to see the guest performer, whom we later found out to be Ellie Goulding! I am soo incredibly sad that I was only one wooden door from Ellie Goulding! :( :( :( At the wine bar, they had a fancy automated wine dispenser that you is touchscreen. All you have to do is insert your wine card (purchased at the bar) and choose the drink! However the minimum amount to put on the card was 20 euro, and since I wasn't too educated on wines, I decided to save wine tasting for another occasion. 

I did get some lovely bruschetta instead of wine, which was absolutely delicious!

We did end up at The Oliver Plunkett (the pub this time, which is located on Oliver Plunkett street, coincidentally) where we heard some local bands perform. After sitting downstairs for the first performance, Melina and I discovered that the upstairs was much less crowded with a dance floor as well. We then moved to hear the band upstairs, which turned out to be a great idea. Many of the younger crowd, approximately around my age, started some folk dances/swing dancing, which was great fun. We did a train throughout the entire upstairs and danced for quite some while before retiring for the night. It was definitely one of the best cultural experiences in my life, one that I will hopefully remember for a very long time.

All in all, I quite enjoyed Arthur's Day. I of course had a pint of Guinness and then had a Smithwick, a red ale that tasted in between a light and dark beer. I liked the taste of it. However, I don't think I remembered to take a picture of it... :( More adventures to come! :)

First Day of School

School started today... I guess I have some mixed feelings about this. Part of me is glad that it started so that I can remember that I am still a student, but the other part of me is not looking forward to the tests and homework. My first class was at 9am for a computer class (the first ever computer class I have ever taken in college). Originally I had signed up for applied psychology classes to fulfill requirements for a psychology minor back in UCSD. However, the department did not approve my classes with the excuse that I did not have any previous background in the subject to take 2nd and 3rd year classes of psychology at UCC....

Anyways, back to the computer class...This was an introduction to C programming course, with mainly freshmen in the class. The class was held in the Western Gateway Building (WGB), and thankfully the room was the first one I saw when I entered. The room and everything appeared normal, and the professor was very nice. I could understand him just as if he was teaching in the US. The only bad part of this class was the material....

The story goes like this. Let's pretend that a computer's language is like many criss crossing railroad tracks that has switches that can be either 0 or 1. To get the train from one destination to another, you can flip the switch and change the tracks with 0 or 1. This all made sense to me, but what didn't make sense was when we added up the paths. Apparently in computer science 1+1 is 10....not 2..... For the next 30 minutes I tried to wrap my brain around this but realized I can't....This is why I will remain forever tech unsavvy, but that is perfectly okay with me. I will always have biology! :)

Much to my relief, Jason realized this class does not count as any credit for him since he's taken it already so we didn't have to take it anymore! PHEW!

The next class on the list was structural biochemistry. One weird thing about classes here is that they are in 1 or 2 hour blocks just like at home, but there is not much of a passing period to get to your next class. This is because in Ireland, most students study only one concentration instead of having a more liberal arts focus of a little of this a little of that such as kids in the states. This means that most students have class in the same building, therefore if class ends 3 minutes before the next class is supposed to start, it wasn't a big deal. However, structural biochemistry ended up being very far away from WGB, so Jason and I had to half speedwalk to the Kane building, which we got lost halfway there since we could see the building but not a clear path to get there.

We arrived 5 minutes late to the structural biochemistry class. When we entered, it seemed like the entire lecture hall turned around to look at us. Looking in desperation for any two adjacent open seats, we scrambled to get ready for class without disturbing others. The professor was still introducing the course and was just about to begin by the time we arrived, luckily for us. We started with amino (pronounced ah-mine-no) acids and their structures from amino acid to peptides to polypeptides. The professor also pronounced methyl groups as mee-thyl groups with a long e sound. Both Jason and I found this to be hilarious as we finished organic chemistry with a professor at UCSD that was very angry with students when they mispronounced chemical groups.

After the biochemistry class, my sense of normalcy was restored from the abrupt glass-shattering computer class earlier in the morning. We ran a few errands on campus afterwards, then headed home for an easy night in.

I hope that my classes work out and that I will do well in them! There is a myth on campus that if one steps on the school seal printed on the tile floor in the main quad, that person will become either pregnant or fail their classes. Fortunately I haven't stepped on it since I have become aware of this...though I can't be too sure before they told me. Personally I don't count it if I did step on it ;)

The next few pictures were taken around campus. The greenery pictures were taken on walks that were on the edges of campus that eventually led to the main campus. There are also some pictures of cafe serendipidy- me and Jason's favorite cafe to go to when we are in the area!

This is one of my favorite views from campus. So gorgeous. I am lucky to have found such a wonderfully beautiful campus!

This is Jason's favorite dish- seafood chowder! It was so choked full of 3 varieties of fish and the chowder was a very light cream that was absolutely delicious. It comes with a slice of whole grain Irish soda bread with .... BUTTER! :)