The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good

Set off for Belfast and a short 48h-visit to our
Sea water-treatment plant there.
Once at Gardermoen Airport me and my manager
slipped in to the SAS-lounge (him having a Gold-card)
for a beer and sallad waiting for the flight.

Once at the gate our tickets were automagically
upgraded to business (again the Gold-card) and we could
enjoy a warm meal, free drinks and comfortable seats,
while our dear collegue (who actually is the Project Manager)
suffered the discomfort and meal-less economy-class.

Most important of all is the details ...
Can't stop admirring the napkins we where given for the dinner,
there was a button hole in one of the ends
to be able to attach it to the shirt,
as well as a little mini clothespin to fasten it.

The Bad

Well once in Belfast, more specifically Carricfergus
some minutes drive outside,
we settled down in the hotell and had dinner.
Eager to try the local kitchen I ordered "Cod & chips" -
a giant piece of deep-fried cod and 9 (!) fries stacked in a box
served with mashed peas.

Fine with that, but the wonderful diet continued at breakfast.
We were served a traditional Eng. breakfast with
white bread, jams and some warm servings -
eggs, bacon, beans and a very interesting sausage.

The grease-feast continues as we head to the snack-bar
at the plant for a quick lunch,bacon sandwich sounded
like quite a decent option. I can give you the recipe -

2 pieces of white bread
Large amounts of butter
4 huge pieces of bacon
Tomato sauce

Bacon Sandwich á La Kilroot Power Station Snack bar

I don't wanna be whining overly much but
I do find it interesting that normal decent healthy food
is so hard to come by.
But it leaves me with an explanation to why the regular
UK football hooligan looks the way he does :)

Ireland 0 - My prejudices 1

The Ugly?

Well the food was one area where me prejudices didn't let me down.
Two areas where they did was housing and women.

The housing was, in stark contrast with my visions, not boring.
It wasn't even all brown and grey. Of course there were some but in general
Ireland and Northern Ireland was greener, happier and more cosy than I'd expected.
In fact, during the two hour drive up to Belfast from Dublin I didn't
hardly even see a gas station in the landscape.
Ireland 1 - My prejudices 1

The women ... well I had a premade opinion here as well,
with my experiences and sightings in London at hand.
I had thought them all to be grey mice in boring clothing
and brown straight hair.
To my surprise they were a notch hotter :)
Not to say the streets were crowded with supermodels
but they were just normal girls and women in all ranges.
Ireland 2 - My prejudices 1

The men ... well here my prejudices didn't let me down
all that much. There were the random Pat, Tony, Colin, Ian
Taken straight outta the pub or football arena.
But all in all easy to get by and quite talkative.
Ireland 2 - My prejudices 2


And finally a little culinary sidenote from Geoffrey -
Guiness can be served to any type of food,
he demonstrated this by having a pint for his Oysters and Scampi =)

It did at least taste good served with a Shank of lamb and mashies...

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*Pics to be added during the morning*

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