One night in Cork

There's a major highway that leads straight to Cork, so we wound our way towards it and soon we were pelting down a nice, wide, multi-lane roadway. With the road easy and straight-forward before us we thought that we would try out the radio. Until this point, we were concentrating on getting our bearings, watching out for small sign posts, or hey, just enjoying the scenery. Now, on this long stretch of road with mostly fields on either side we cranked the tunes!

You know how the Irish have a reputation of being gregarious and talkative? Yeah...there was a lot of talking on the radio. A lot. Up and down the dial we went - talking, talking, talking. If we were lucky enough to find a song playing, it was usually followed by lots and lots of talking...very frustrating! We did find better selections of station when we were closer to major cities, but otherwise, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph can those guys can talk!

The southern part of Ireland, where we now found ourselves is relatively flat, with green pastures and farmed land. We arrived in Cork during afternoon rush hour, of course the hostel we were staying at was on the opposite side from where we came in. We finally made it after circling around the one way streets of the neighbourhood a couple of times. It was a beautiful Georgian place with a sweeping front lawn. But there were pressing matters to attend to, we were starving. We dropped off our stuff and went foraging...for a restaurant.

The hostel is located directly in front of the Cork University College, so we figured that there would be heaps of food-like options available, but alas we were mistaken. We did come across a couple of places, but their vegetarian options were scant or non-existent. Then...
 lo! We came upon Cafe Paradiso. A very fancy vegetarian restaurant.

Jolene ordered the deep fried summer squash flowers with pea & ricotta filling, smoked pepperonata, green onion polenta and basil sauce, and I ordered the
spiced pan fried tofu with asian greens, gingered coconut-tamarind sauce,
rice noodles, and shiitake fritter. We certainly were not going to have cider with this fine meal, so we ordered a nice red wine. They brought us some tapas to start; spiced peanuts, seasoned black and green olives, and some sort of savoury sesame seed brittle...yum!! The meals were superbly delicious, and we remarked on the contrast of our surroundings from just a couple of days ago; from lunching on a hilltop with nature's stark, lonely  beauty laid bare before us; to the opulence of a fine meal, with a fine wine...all of which cost close to 3 times the price of our room that night. "Civilisation" is a strange thing.

Although we were tempted by the desert menu (which included, dark chocolate & olive oil mousse with cherries and spiced almond brittle, gooseberry & almond tartlet with amaretto custard and spiced caramel, and strawberry pavlova with passion fruit syrup to name a few) we desisted and ended up strolling back to the hostel. Once there, I'm rather ashamed to say that we fell promptly asleep.