Shopping in Ireland

The roommates and I looked in our fridge yesterday and we saw...like five slices of cheese and a various bag of veggies. Needless to say, we needed to go food shopping.

We trucked off to the city with our backpacks and associated bags because unlike many places in the U.S. they don't give bags when you go food shopping unless you specifically buy them. There's a huge department store called Dunnes (whose slogan is "we're different because we are Irish.") Dunnes has a good size food department, but then so does Target. What Target does not have is like a downward and upward sloping conveyer belt. Think like in the airport but just going up and down. It's actually kinda disconcerting...but fun.

The city center has pretty much any type of store you could want. It has such American classics as Penneys, H + M, Claires and T.K. Maxx. Somehow the J got replaced with K when you cross the Atlantic. There are a bunch of Irish stores and because it is Ireland, a bunch of pubs. The interesting thing about the city center is the street names don't remain the same from block to block. You can be on Tunkey Street and when you cross over a street, it becomes Oliver Plunkett....whom I researched and learned that he was a martyr, drawn and quartered but from what I can understand had no connection to Cork.

Anyway it's kind of interesting to go food shopping with a backpack because the city center is at the bottom of a hill and it goes up north and south in both directions from it. So trying to get back to anywhere requires a steep hike up a hill. You remember the Grinch at the end of the movie when he is trying to get up Mt. Crumpett with the toys and the dog is struggling? That's kind of what it is like. But we eventually made it back and food was cooked (and/or microwaved).