Burgers in Dublin

I don't know what it is with the Irish, but they certainly can't make a decent burger. I've tried four different places, and each time it's the same; You get a toasted bun, a fairly large patty of ground beef and then whatever "flavouring" you've ordered. That's it. Only once did I get a tiny bit lettuce, a single slice of tomato and a thin layer of mayo on the top part of the bun. One time the "burger" was covered in fried onion and gravy; another was covered in chili con carne, which I found very strange having ordered a chili burger. I would have expected a regular burger with chilies or at least chili sauce. Having thought the chili con carne was a thing local to the restaurant, I've managed to make the mistake twice of ordering a "Chili Burger". Burgers should have mayo, a patty of ground beef, a good amount of lettuce, two to three slices of tomato depending on the size, a few slices of cucumber, ketchup and then the "flavouring" e.g. fried bacon, guacamole, fresh or pickled chilies, satay source or nothing if you're going for a plain burger. In comparison the burgers you get at Gourmet Burger Kitchen is seriously gourmet, which is still nothing compared to some of the burgers you can get in some places in Copenhagen. I especially like the one from Cafe Klint, but generally you get some seriously good burgers in the Copenhagen cafes. Some of them do change the basic formula, e.g. by using ciabatta or focaccia as the bun, but that only enhances the experience. I guess that my conclusion is to stay away from burgers in Dublin, especially if you're used to e.g. Gourmet Burger Kitchen, and go explore some of the other types of restaurants in stead. One I can recommend is Yamamori Noodles which is Japanese style food (think Wagammama style food in a regular restaurant). Really good food and nice service. The only downside was to wait for 20min before getting a table...

Going home

If finally Friday, and I'm on my way to the airport to go home to Wimbledon.

Naturally it's fairly nice weather now, and much better than it was in the weekend where Katrin came over. We did manage to see a bit of Dublin, but with the weather constantly changing and the ever present threat of showers it wasn't exactly the best sight seeing conditions. The only real sight seeing we managed was following Lonely Planet's walk called Medieval & Viking Dublin (pictures are on PicasaWeb), which took us past the noteworthy medieval places in Dublin as well as what I guess are places everyone visiting Dublin should see. We saw where the old city wall had been, a few remaining parts of it and of cause the oldest continuously inhabited house and the oldest pub. We also was St Patrick's Church, from the outside, and Dublin Castle, again from the outside. We could have gone inside all the various places we passes, the guidebook did suggest this several times, but the weather was just holding and we didn't really feel all that cultural at that point. We made it through the walk without any rain, but the wind was strong and cold so by the time we were finished we just wanted to go back to the apartment and curl up in front of the TV with some soup :)

The only other excursions we took was to the area around Crafton Street and to Dundrum Town Center (a big mall i bit south of Dublin city center) to do some shopping. I don't know if it was the weather being dull and practically saying "stay home in bed", but we didn't really buy anything and in the end just wanted to go back to the apartment and relax...we still have loads of sight we haven't seen, not to mention seeing more of the Ireland outside Dublin, but something tells me we'll have more time for that later in the year. I'm not sure if I'll be here for phase 2, but if I am it should give us plenty of time to explore both Ireland and Dublin.

The week has gone by without much happening. We were planning on going to an event at the horse tracks in Leopardstown, but the weather dissuaded us in the end, and we ended up doing nothing. We did go out yesterday though, well some of us anyway, to selebrate that the other project team here in Dublin had gone live with their implementation. As they were out with their client, we didn't join them until later for drinks. It was good seeing them out and about again, as they've had a few stressfull weeks without time to drinking with the rest of us. They did look quite tired though, so it might still be a while before they're back to their usual energy level.

Talking about energy levels, I finally managed to sign up to the local gym. It's literally placed in the basement of the building, relatively cheap and only accessible to residents so it seems a bit crazy that i hadn't gotten around to signing up earlier. The gym isn't that big, but given that there aren't that many people who use it, it seems that it isn't that big a problem. I managed to go twice this week, and it was only on Tuesday night where I had to start off rowing while I was waiting for the treadmills to become available. Anyway, it feels good exercising again even though I'm thoroughly sore from sitting on the exercise bike. We've planned to go on a bike ride for a couple of days during our holiday, and as it's literally been years since I've ridden a bike, I need to get back into the habit. Even if it includes sore hip bones...

We're just driving along the harbor of Dublin, and I think this is one of the places I'd like to explore a bit more at some point. It has some really nice buildings, and I'm sure there are loads of interesting things to see and photograph.