Slainte!

Some fun news ... Dan and I booked a trip to Ireland in October, for four nights and five days, the same weekend as our first anniversary. Dan was a history major in college and wrote his senior thesis on Irish history, lived in Dublin for a summer and has made multiple trips there will his family. I’ve never been. I don’t know which of us is more excited; me because I’ve never been or him because he has been many times and loves it. Suffice it to say, we’re both extremely excited and it’s a wonderful distraction to the ho-hum mundanities of everyday life to have an awesome trip to look forward to. The plan is to fly into Dublin, then rent a car and drive around Ireland, stay at a bed and breakfasts each night and fly home out of Shannon. Dan knows his way around and will act as our tour guide and plan most of trip. So far the itinerary includes stops along the way in Kilkenny, Dingle and Milltown Malbay. This will be our first “real trip” together (our honeymoon did not count, I’m sorry to say) and the first of many to come, I hope.

Our plane tickets were crazy-expensive, but with the way things are going we told ourselves they were going to go up, not down, so we might as well just suck it up and go now. Air travel is becoming so sad and aggravating – not just with prices, but the general chaos of the industry. I don’t know what the solution is, a government take-over maybe, at least temporarily? Something has to give at some point. With my family living scattered all over the world, its very depressing to imagine that at some point it will just be too difficult and expensive for us to see one another on any regular basis. And family visits aside, there are so many places I want to go and explore and I wonder if it will become too prohibitive and travel will, once again, become a luxury only for the very wealthy. When I first moved out to Boston I could usually find a round-trip ticket back to California for around $250, if I looked hard enough. Nowadays, I can forget ever getting home for less than $500, and probably a lot more. The price is times two when you factor in traveling as a duo. Ugh. Okay, that’s the end of my Debbie Downer airline tangent.

In other news: food! Is that any surprise? Last weekend we tried two new restaurants, as different as can be. On Saturday night Dan surprised me with reservations at POPS, yet another new place in the South End. We both really enjoyed it. The décor is modern-elegant without being stuffy and the food could be described the same way. I also liked that there wasn’t much on the menu over $20. My guilty splurge was an order of the onion rings to share. They were out-of-this-world perfect – tender yet crunchy in a tempura batter and the onions didn’t all slither out when you took a bite (that is the worst).

Our other culinary adventure, with an emphasis on adventure, was on Sunday. While running errands around Southie, Dan suggested we drive around exploring into Dorchester. For those of you not from the area, Dorchester is quite a rough neighborhood. Some parts of it are actually rather nice, but its mostly kind of a lock-your-doors and don’t-make-eye-contact part of town. Think Gone Baby Gone, if you've seen it (which I recommend, if you haven't). To my delight we stumbled onto what appeared to be Little Saigon, and a dearth of Vietnamese shops, markets and restaurants. There are few cuisines I like more than Vietnamese and its been ages since I’ve had a decent bowl of Pho and some spring rolls. We ventured into this tiny little hole-in-the-wall called something like unintelligible like “Pho So 1 Boston". There was an almost discernable needle scratching off the record when we walked in, every head turned to look at what the cat dragged in. I highly doubt that a couple of yuppie white kids had ever set foot in that place, but I am so glad we did because the food was so awesomely delicious, inexpensive and generously portioned. I am definitely going back and making it “our spot” for all my Vietnamese hankerings. And yes, I know, I am the living embodiment of a Stuff White People Like post. What can I say? I am a white person and this is some stuff that I like, including authentic Vietnamese food. Fong, I know you are so proud – you were my original Ambassador of Pho.

I’m excited to have tomorrow off work and do some Grade A relaxing this weekend, hanging out with the doggle as usual. I will likely bake something, Dan will fire up the grill and probably head over to watch the fireworks on the Charles River and listen to the Boston Pops. I always miss Redlands the most during the Fourth of July, for such a little place it sure knows how to do Independence Day up right. It was always one of my favorite days of the year growing up there. But its some consolation that Boston has got to be the second best place spend the Fourth, what with all the local pageantry and history of America. Happy Fourth of July everyone!