Vegan in Dublin!

A quick warning about restaurants in Ireland.  They will try to charge you Dollars instead of Euros. Unless you have a ridiculously high transaction fee, do NOT do this.  They are price gouging you and making extra money.  They are supposed to ask you, but they often don't/.

The Bakehouse

I had breakfast here after the red eye from Newark.  It was good. I went all Basic and got the avocado toast. It is easy to get to downtown and within walking distance of most bus stops.  They had other breakfast options as well when we went there.

Apertivo
This was a walking down the street find. We were hungry after walking for so long after the tour.  I got a Vegan VLT and my friend got a vegan pizza.  We both thought they were delish! Mine was totally messy to eat, but so worth it. It was tasty and toasty and just what I expected.  It was a great snack/lunch item.  Not too much food, but good.

Noble House Chinese
This wasn't on the food tour, but it was next to my hotel in Dublin. I had the tofu and veggie sweet and sour here. There were WAY too many peppers and onions and not enough other mixed vegetables for my taste, but the sweet and sour sauce was right up my alley. My friend said they had the best pad thai he has ever had, it was so good, he went back three or four times to the same place while we were there.

The Rolling Doughnut
These were yummy, if you like doughnuts! They have vegan and non-vegan options.  I got the little three box that all the Irish liked to carry around. Two stuffed doughnuts (blueberry and raspberry) and vanilla glaze.

Food Tour
On one Saturday, I took a Vegan In Ireland Food Tour, and man did they show me to some great places! We visited 6 stops, but 2 were clothing related.

Cornicopia
We started here and had curry and goulash as a main bowl and potato salad and a cucumber/brocolini/pumpkin seed salad. I still dream about the potato salad.  I'm actually going to buy their cookbook Cornicopia at Home because their food was so good.  After the food tour, I went back twice more (insert blushing emoji here). That's how good it is, and also a take on how often they are open compared to others, especially on the weekends.

Blazing Salads
We stopped here for an egg roll and man I wish I had time to go back.  The food is not all vegan, but it is mostly vegetarian. A great place to grab a quick lunch or food to go.






Difontaine
This place had the best pizza I have ever had outside of the U.S. Seriously. It tasted just like a U.S. based pizza- fresh from NYC. It was super salty, but super tasty! I actually went back another time.


Thunder Road Cafe
According to their website, they actually have tons of vegan options here!  We went to try the English version of Beyond Burger. If you like Beyond, then you will like this.  These types of burgers will taste like meat if you are someone who doesn't like the taste of meat.






Brother Hubbard
All the Irish people loved this stop. But I just wouldn't go back. They were a weird fusion place. When I want falafels, I want them to taste like falafels, and these didn't. They had a smoky eggplant that tasted like pure smoke.

Vegan In Ireland

In August 2019, I got the chance to go to Ireland.  And surprisingly, it is extremely easy to be vegan in Ireland. Except for breakfast. All allergens (at least the 14 most common) have to be legally available in a list, if not on the menu exactly. So that means that eggs and milk have to be listed as an ingredient.  

Breakfast is difficult- the full Irish breakfast is meat meat more meat and eggs.  They will also have mushrooms and tomatoes.  Hotels will probably have oatmeal (there was a really yummy golden syrup oatmeal at my hotel).  Below is an overview of the delicious vegan meals I had outside of Dublin. Dublin meals in a different post.  

I do not subscribe to the vegan alcohol aspect, so I do not know if all of the delicious cider I drank was vegan or not, but it was so fresh and tasty. 

Howth

We went to the Abby Tavern. It has a good mixture of vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, and all sorts of allergy menus. I had the Stovetop Flatbread (Cherry Tomato Passata, Roast Cauliflower, Chickpea Croutons, and Sweet Potato Fries).  And the best part is that it was edible. I personally didn't like it, but it just wasn't to my taste. The chickpea croutons were just dried chickpeas. I also had the  Frozen Berries (Warm Vegan White Chocolate Sauce, Raspberry Sorbet, Pecan Vegan Praline).  Now the sorbet was delicious! The frozen berries were just that- frozen berries. Odd, but still good. I still recommend this as an option because a place with decent menu options for all is hard to come by. 

Malahide

Now this restaurant, was so tasty.  It was also 30 euros for my meal. We ate at Siam Thai restaurant.  I had the Yellow Curry (without the fish sauce): A mild and creamy yellow curry with coconut milk, onion, potatoes, pineapple and topped with fried onion, it’s very easy to eat, and is the mildest of the curries.  I have never had tomatoes and pineapple in my yellow curry. But dang...it was so yummy! Afterwards, we walked to The Fish Shack and got ice cream and sorbet.  So yummy!  If you like Thai food or sorbet, these are a great place to go!

Athalone

We stopped at the Michelin recommended restaurant called Thyme.  They don't upload their most recent menus, but the website and reviews said that they had a vegan option.  So when we got there and they handed me the menu. I asked for their vegan options/allergen menu.  The server looked at me that I was CRAZY. She said they don't have a vegan menu, but they might be able to make something for me, so she would as the chef. The chef said they could, so I had whatever he wanted to serve! I also finally took pictures of the food. 

The three course menu was as follows:

Appetizer: salad with house pickled vegetables. Actually pretty yummy, even though I:m not a big pickle fan. 

Main: Some sort of gnocchi and vegetable dish.  The surprise- it was cold! The little beet red things around the side were so tasty!

Dessert: 3 types of sorbet- peach, rhubarb, and raspberry?

Shannon Airport

Two words for you here: good luck!  You need to investigate the food closely. There was a pasta salad that had ham hidden in it. There was a spicy salad option. 

Dublin Airport

Go to Marquette in Terminal 1.  They have a hot vegan main option every day and numerous salads that are vegan as well.  In Terminal 2, there is a breakfast option that has avocado toast (that you can get without the egg). 

Dublin Hilton Airport Hotel

This is where I stayed (they were great while I was there, but they never sent me a receipt).  Their breakfast did have the Full Irish Breakfast.  They did have oatmeal as an option.  They had a dinner with a superfood salad that was so utterly bland that I can't recommend you getting it unless you just need food that is somewhat healthy and don't care about taste. 

December in Vladivostok

Well, I will start this out with the observation that the entire month of December (Dec 1-21) was spent below zero C AKA below freezing.

That is a bus window that is totally frozen over with ice...

In other words, FREEZING COLD!

This is a underground walkway with snow piled in it.

I got to learn new words such as "метель" or blizzard. I also got to experience cancelled classes in Russia. I would recommend that they invest in the text notification system that U.S. universities have, because otherwise, there is not a lot of ways of notifying people- students and professors just have to check the school's website.Which is interesting and informative- if you know to check.


Russians also had something I hadn't seen people do before (given I hadn't lived where there was snow before)- they used dump trucks to scoop up the snow and take it somewhere else. {I looked into this and they totally do this in places like Boston where they get tons of snow. And it causes a lot of environmental problems because the salt and stuff gets melted into the rivers and poisons things.}



Also, after one of the blizzards- I decided to go exploring and take some beautiful pictures in the snow. But I underestimated to cold and the lack of waterproofing on my shoes. But- I got wonderful pictures. The snow was piled up into the the underground walkways, along all the building and there was almost no one out there. Except a few hardy souls who were trying to hook their Siberian Husky dogs up to mush them. The dogs were the only happy things I saw out at all. No one else was happy, but these dogs were literally jumping in circles and happy barking. it made me smile.

Also in December- I went to a local art gallery. It was off the beaten path, but I had passed it when I was going to tutor the little girls. All the art was done by local artists- they even had an exhibit of student art.

the balloons had Russian poems on them,.

One day before I left, I went out to eat at the restaurant that the family I was tutoring owned. It was Korean food (well a mixture of Korean and Russian), but the older girl recommended some things to me and it was yummy!

I also went and explored the frozen salt water. Yup, it gets so cold that the salt water freezes over. Very cool and very cold looking. There were young Russians out playing in the snow and a guy out ice fishing.

Proof! Also, note how high the snow is on my jeans- I had to step through all that!

One other interesting thing-the sanctions were causing some problems while inciting nationalism in the people. It is an interesting time to be in Russia. All the people were nice and friendly. Most were amazed to meet an American. The few times I was able to discuss politics and they didn't necessarily like the government but they were super interested to meet an American. One of my regrets was that I didn't carry my camera around to start a photo-essay of "The American Flag in Russia." Everywhere I turned there were younger Russians wearing the American flag on a swim suit, t-shirt, jacket, vest, shoes, bags, etc. I would have loved to capture these with an explanation of why it was so prominent.  On the other hand there was this:

Basically translated as "Our prices remain the same."IT is in reference to the fact that as the Rouble was falling, everything was getting more expensive because it cost more to import, but at these stores- they didn't let the silly dollar matter! And it was posted all along stores in the central mall.


Christmas Time
Although Christmas isn't really celebrated in Russia- News Years is-Elena hosted a Christmas dinner for Adela & me. We had this delicious spread:

And the cool "firecrakers" that pop out streamers.

I really enjoy my time with these two ladies and will miss them when I leave. 

Coca Cola Tour!

While looking for things to do here, I figured out that there was a Coca-Cola factory here! Totally cool. However, they only take group tours, so I asked Svetlana if we could go, and she made it work! She arranged a tour and offered to let the other American and Australian I had met go with us (high school students on an exchange program with the Rotary club).




We took a long (30-40 min) bus ride out to the factory and then got a tour. We had to wear hair nets and those little booties that go over your shoes. But we saw the whole process from the beginning to end. The bottles started from this little test tube like plastic things that was blown up to the 2L bottles. Then the bottling area (it looks like a normal bottling area).

We got to taste a sample of whatever we wanted to. I chose Fanta Mandarin (which is NOT Fanta Orange). It was sweeter and smoother than the Orange. But, like all of Fanta's flavors- not distributed world-wide. It also was a New Years special for that area of  the world.

But this meant I had toured corporate Coca-Cola, a factory in Russia, and Coca-Cola World in Atlanta. Totally cool!

Oceanarium!

While we were at the Suhanov Museum, we picked up a pamphlet that listed "20 Cool Places to Visit in Vlad" by the awesome vl.ru site that lists all of the stuff to do or see in Vlad.

They listed the Oceanarium as a thing to go to. I mentioned to the amazing Svetlana that I wanted to go there. She asked Alex and Ryan if they wanted to go, and since we all wanted to, she suggested Saturday at 12.

It was a date!

Only I was the only one who showed up. Oh boys.

So Elena and I explored the Oceanarium as a girls day!

It is cool to look at, lots of weird fish, even giant fish and crabs, possibly a shark?

It isn't much to look at, but fun, if you like fish. However, a bit expensive at 300 RUB a person (for Russia). (Although kids were cheaper.)

What was different about this aquarium than others was that it had a museum with a dead things in bottles that most American aquariums don't have. Even creepy dead seal fetuses....


I'm not sure what this thing is to the right, but I think it could eat me alive. I could actually go look up what the Russian or scientific name is, since it was totally listed on the little white card on the top.

But what would be the fun in that?



Afterwards, we decided to go to Tokyo Kawaii, where I had been once before, but it is really delicious.  So we went too!

Sangria with Japanese?

I had delicious Japanese food- cucumber rolls, miso soup, sangria and chocolate melting cake. I know, the last two are really weird order at a Japanese place, but Russia?

Melting cake, but with weird green stuff in it. No I don't know what it is.

See you around the globe!

Suhanova House Museum!

Another SRAS museum tour!

Suhanov was the governor of Vladivostok at the turn of the 19th/20th century. I'd tell you more, but I don't remember dates on tours and he doesn't exist according to Russian or English Google.  (seriously?)

But I do remember a lot.

He was married with 7 (!) kids. And they all lived in this cool little house. The house was populated with old furniture, not sure if the family actually owned any of it, or if it was all just period.

When they sat down for dinner/lunch, dad (obviously) sat at the head of the table, with the girls to the right and the boys to the left.







He also had a really cool office with an interesting map that was made when Japan controlled the Kurile Islands (disputed today, even though Japan renounced all claims at the end of WW2).

Upstairs they had the bedrooms, where the 4 girls slept in one and the 3 boys in the other.

Personally, I found the privacy of the bathroom *refreshing*.

Then we got to have a "Master Class" of calligraphy writing.

In Russian. 

Although, I was apparently good at it. And purple was  apparently the color of ink back then. 

One thing that was cool about the museum was that we could simply wander through and touch anything we wanted. They had replicated letters and newspapers that was cool to look though.

Interesting fact: the son of the governor/representation of the Tsar in Vladivostok/definition of the bourgeoisie class was .....wait for it....a revolutionary. Must of made dinners awkward.

See you around the globe!

Hockey Game!

The arena!

Apparently Hockey is going to be the sport that I go to when I am in Russia. Went once in Petersburg, and now I've gone in Vlad.

One of the girls, Adela, in my class is married to one of the players (which is actually why she is in Vlad).

Elena and Adela

The team is called Admiral (like the naval thing).

Three rows from the ice? Why not!

We weren't supposed to take pictures, but you know me!

 In case you don't remember- Cheerleading is a thing at hockey games. It's weird, but still.

What was different with this vs. Petersburg, is that there were no police here. But the fans were still as awesome.

We didn't win, but they did play well.

See you around the globe!