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Irish Furs Not New Year's Party
Jan. 7th, 2019 10:58 pmThis weekend Wolfie and I headed over to Dublin for the Irish Furs Not New Year's Party. We had intended to go last year but it clashed with the Brewdenell Beer Festival while we were also putting as much money into the mortgage as possible, ahead of remortgaging at the end of 2018. However, upon realising that we had no real plan for New Year's Eve this time around, we thought we might as well book a trip to Ireland, partly to honour promises that we would visit but also because it was really cheap. This saw us hurry to Leeds Bradford Airport after work - a stressful experience due to work seeping right to when the taxi came - before boarding the 19:35 flight to the Irish capital. Typically we got to the airport significantly earlier than we needed to, meaning we could enjoy a leisurely if overpriced lunch in the bar there, while the taxi journey at the other end, at €38, wasn't cheap either. The driver had pretty bad BO and looked a little like Brian Butterfield, while also being the least talkative driver in the history of taxi drivers, but at least we got to the hotel safely and in time to head into the city for a short while.
We pretty much dumped the bags in our room and headed on out, stopping to pick up a nearby geocache on the way. I wanted the Irish souvenir, which turned out to be a Dublin one, and fortunately it was pretty easy to find the cache in the dark. We then headed to the closest craft beer bar that Google could find - Alfie Byrne's by Galway Bay Brewery - which was about 15 minutes' walk away. As we went, we noticed a number of deceptively named places such as the Craft Dry Cleaners, while our walking route took us over a lock on a pretty little canal. Through Dublin's suburbs we went, touching upon the fringe of the downtown and turning into a little courtyard where they were doing improvement works. The bar was in here, tucked away underneath a Hilton, and it being the first Friday after New Year it was quite quiet. There were a number of people in though and with BBC Two's Billy Connolly evening being shown on a big screen, we had plenty to watch as we first tried a sample tray of pretty standard Galway Bay beers before moving on to the strong stuff. After Connolly's trip to the Arctic, they put on the film in which he starred with David Tennant - an odd production involving him dying and his grandchildren burning his corpse in a boat on a lake Viking-burial style. It was rather strange. The highlight for me in this place, apart from talking to the nice bar staff, was the laugh I got when one of the barmen overheard me describe Jacob Rees-Mogg as a 'haunted pencil', which pretty much made my evening. Stereotypically, there was a drunk guy in here called Fergal who had to be escorted out by someone who may have been his mother all the while protesting his sobriety.
The Lansdowne Hotel was quite a nice place to stay, situated in a Georgian town house in the high-end District 4 of Dublin. It was about a half hour walk from the city centre, with exceptionally comfortable beds, although the shower was incredibly erratic in terms of temperature while the walls were paper thin, which effectively curtailed our room party with Fudge once the Not New Year's Party had finished. With the Party not beginning until 4pm on Saturday, we had some time to kill, and after sleeping in ridiculously, not surfacing until 1pm, we decided to head into the city centre under the pretence of getting geocaches. I had promised Wolfie that after we had gotten one on the Friday night, I would leave it alone until the Saturday, so now it was time for him to withhold his side of the bargain. In the end we found twelve, with the map guiding us to a mix of horrendous alleyways and beautiful art deco buildings that we would not have seen had we not been out caching. The Gas Station right in the centre of the Dublin was arguably a highlight, as was the cache very near the place where Oscar Wilde had grown up, a fact I knew about the city but one I had forgotten. My favourite one though was perhaps the virtual one at the huge metal prick known as 'The Stiffey By the Liffy', soaring dizzingly high into the Dublin sky. It dwarfs the poor marble statue of someone or other next to it - and you can almost see the incredulity on her face - while the spire apparently marks the centre of the city. Another cool cache was the picture you had to take outside one of the doors at Trinity College while holding something Irish - I opted for a packet of potato crisps, partly due to stereotype but also partly due to the excellent farming produce Ireland provides. Indeed, the range of crisp brands here was legendary and we were delighed to see our friend Tayto once again. After a busy day of geocaching, where we got to see much of the city centre, we retired to the Porterhouse Beer Company near Temple Bar - a place we had been the last time we had visited the city. Then it was rammed with a live band on a tiny stage above the stairs and although it was reasonably busy on Saturday night, we got a seat ironically right in front of the stage, albeit an empty one with just a drumkit on it. We were going to sample three thirds then head off, but the barlady insisted we go for six thirds, with Wolfie and I sharing all six rather than going for two lots of three as we would usually do. Due to their extensive range, this proved to be wise, particularly as the stouts from the second tray were rather standout.
Realising that the Not New Year's Party begin at 4pm rather than the 5-6pm we had been told by the hotel receptionist that morning, we headed back to the hotel shortly after our beer. However, we needed food on the way, and instead of going to the Burger King near the hotel, we went to local chain Rocket's instead. This is like a diner very much in the vein of Five Guys, and with prices to match, but the chips were particularly divine, coated as they were in garlic sauce and grated parmesan. Wolfie got the cheese and bacon, while we shared six sliders. Wolfie quite liked the burgers but I thought the buns were a little too damp for my taste, but it certainly provided an excellent meal, so much so that we ended up going back to a Rocket's in the centre of the city on the Sunday with the Dublin furs as part of our general mooch around.
We arrived back at the hotel just after 6pm and Wolfie headed upstairs for a shower after we had gotten our wristbands. Dalrish, Pudge and Swifty were all downstairs in the main dance area, and it was great to catch up with them again, with the three of us all heading up to the bar to have a drink and a chat. It was this trio with whom we were going to spend much of the night, along with Fudge's crew, who I had not met before. Wolfie knew Fudge from the Motorfurs group so it was great to meet this group, with whom we spent most of Sunday walking around Dublin checking out the range of vintage or model shops the city has to offer. We also grabbed some food, the aforementioned Rocket's, which turned out to be a pleasant afternoon as we whiled down the time before our new friends had to head back to their various corners of Ireland (and us to the airport to catch our flight home). This day had started with breakfast - Fudge accidentally ringing the wrong hotel number inviting us down at around 10am. Fortunately, the paper-thin walls meant we could hear them leaving so we popped down to the restaurant area to tuck into a delicious full Irish Breakfast, replete with smoky and rich white pudding, as well as tea and toast. We shared a few anecdotes before checking out, with a group of eight of us taking the efficient DART four stops into the city to Connolly Station. The station we got the train from was outside the impressive Aviva Stadium, while it was on this platform that I learned what TikTok was, not having heard of this before last Friday when I had to translate a Chinese phrase containing this into English.
Anyway, I digress. The Not New Year's Eve Party on the Saturday was great fun, a mix of cheesy club tunes from the DJ downstairs and drinking in the bar upstairs, with the latter taking precedence as the night wore on. I got into fursuit at around 8pm and danced in suit for about an hour and a half, with Dalrish in particular being particularly desperate for me to suit up. Swifty spent a lot of time in suit too, and it was great dancing with him, as well as noticing that the bar manager had the exact same attire as he did. It was incredibly hot though, with the columns supporting the building, which were aligned with glitter ball type mirrors, dripping in sweaty condensation. There was some modest finger food served on platters at 9:30pm, with the samosas being particularly delicious, while people started to drift away from about 11pm. We ended up in the bar with Fudge's crew, with us heading back down to the dancefloor at a couple of minutes to midnight for a fake New Year's Countdown. Shortly after this, I made a poorly timed joke about Wolfie's baldness and he got upset with me, leading to some bad blood for about twenty minutes. I felt bad as I thought I had ruined his night but we had soon made up.
With the bar closing at 12:30am, those who were staying in the hotel went to their rooms. We tried to have a room party with Fudge, but ten minutes into it, we heard a loud bang on the wall from his neighbours and so had to curtail it. This was perhaps just as well as we had to get up to pack and check out the next day, and also to have a shower as I had failed to have one after suiting. As I said, on Sunday we grabbed breakfast, showered, took the DART into Dublin, had food then went shopping, with the numbers dwindling as the day progressed due to the differing times everyone had booked their coaches and trains. Fudge had to go at 2pm back to Belfast, while we said goodbye to everyone at around 4pm outside the ha'penny bridge, so called because it used to cost a ha'penny to cross it. It was great seeing our Irish friends again, not to mention meeting some new ones too, and we do hope to be back there soon.
On our way back to the hotel, we decided to go via Against The Grain, a craft beer that kept popping up in my searches whenever I looked for good ones. This was a great one to be fair, and we shared three halves, including one of the Siren Caribbean Chocolate Cake ones. After this, it was back to the hotel to pick up our bags, then on to the Airport Shuttle Bus which was just around the corner from where we were staying. At the bus stop, the 702 bus route wasn't advertised, but Google suggested it did stop there, as did the official airport bus website. Fortunately, it did, meaning we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so much so that we managed to grab a couple more drinks in the bar, including one from the fantastically named Wicklow Wolf Brewery. The only shame here was we couldn't try them all, a frustration considering our flight ended up being delayed by about forty-five minutes. Still, we managed to get home eventually, and after a surprisingly short forty-minute flight, it was good to know that such a short trip is definitely viable in future, and without taking any time off work at all.
We pretty much dumped the bags in our room and headed on out, stopping to pick up a nearby geocache on the way. I wanted the Irish souvenir, which turned out to be a Dublin one, and fortunately it was pretty easy to find the cache in the dark. We then headed to the closest craft beer bar that Google could find - Alfie Byrne's by Galway Bay Brewery - which was about 15 minutes' walk away. As we went, we noticed a number of deceptively named places such as the Craft Dry Cleaners, while our walking route took us over a lock on a pretty little canal. Through Dublin's suburbs we went, touching upon the fringe of the downtown and turning into a little courtyard where they were doing improvement works. The bar was in here, tucked away underneath a Hilton, and it being the first Friday after New Year it was quite quiet. There were a number of people in though and with BBC Two's Billy Connolly evening being shown on a big screen, we had plenty to watch as we first tried a sample tray of pretty standard Galway Bay beers before moving on to the strong stuff. After Connolly's trip to the Arctic, they put on the film in which he starred with David Tennant - an odd production involving him dying and his grandchildren burning his corpse in a boat on a lake Viking-burial style. It was rather strange. The highlight for me in this place, apart from talking to the nice bar staff, was the laugh I got when one of the barmen overheard me describe Jacob Rees-Mogg as a 'haunted pencil', which pretty much made my evening. Stereotypically, there was a drunk guy in here called Fergal who had to be escorted out by someone who may have been his mother all the while protesting his sobriety.
The Lansdowne Hotel was quite a nice place to stay, situated in a Georgian town house in the high-end District 4 of Dublin. It was about a half hour walk from the city centre, with exceptionally comfortable beds, although the shower was incredibly erratic in terms of temperature while the walls were paper thin, which effectively curtailed our room party with Fudge once the Not New Year's Party had finished. With the Party not beginning until 4pm on Saturday, we had some time to kill, and after sleeping in ridiculously, not surfacing until 1pm, we decided to head into the city centre under the pretence of getting geocaches. I had promised Wolfie that after we had gotten one on the Friday night, I would leave it alone until the Saturday, so now it was time for him to withhold his side of the bargain. In the end we found twelve, with the map guiding us to a mix of horrendous alleyways and beautiful art deco buildings that we would not have seen had we not been out caching. The Gas Station right in the centre of the Dublin was arguably a highlight, as was the cache very near the place where Oscar Wilde had grown up, a fact I knew about the city but one I had forgotten. My favourite one though was perhaps the virtual one at the huge metal prick known as 'The Stiffey By the Liffy', soaring dizzingly high into the Dublin sky. It dwarfs the poor marble statue of someone or other next to it - and you can almost see the incredulity on her face - while the spire apparently marks the centre of the city. Another cool cache was the picture you had to take outside one of the doors at Trinity College while holding something Irish - I opted for a packet of potato crisps, partly due to stereotype but also partly due to the excellent farming produce Ireland provides. Indeed, the range of crisp brands here was legendary and we were delighed to see our friend Tayto once again. After a busy day of geocaching, where we got to see much of the city centre, we retired to the Porterhouse Beer Company near Temple Bar - a place we had been the last time we had visited the city. Then it was rammed with a live band on a tiny stage above the stairs and although it was reasonably busy on Saturday night, we got a seat ironically right in front of the stage, albeit an empty one with just a drumkit on it. We were going to sample three thirds then head off, but the barlady insisted we go for six thirds, with Wolfie and I sharing all six rather than going for two lots of three as we would usually do. Due to their extensive range, this proved to be wise, particularly as the stouts from the second tray were rather standout.
Realising that the Not New Year's Party begin at 4pm rather than the 5-6pm we had been told by the hotel receptionist that morning, we headed back to the hotel shortly after our beer. However, we needed food on the way, and instead of going to the Burger King near the hotel, we went to local chain Rocket's instead. This is like a diner very much in the vein of Five Guys, and with prices to match, but the chips were particularly divine, coated as they were in garlic sauce and grated parmesan. Wolfie got the cheese and bacon, while we shared six sliders. Wolfie quite liked the burgers but I thought the buns were a little too damp for my taste, but it certainly provided an excellent meal, so much so that we ended up going back to a Rocket's in the centre of the city on the Sunday with the Dublin furs as part of our general mooch around.
We arrived back at the hotel just after 6pm and Wolfie headed upstairs for a shower after we had gotten our wristbands. Dalrish, Pudge and Swifty were all downstairs in the main dance area, and it was great to catch up with them again, with the three of us all heading up to the bar to have a drink and a chat. It was this trio with whom we were going to spend much of the night, along with Fudge's crew, who I had not met before. Wolfie knew Fudge from the Motorfurs group so it was great to meet this group, with whom we spent most of Sunday walking around Dublin checking out the range of vintage or model shops the city has to offer. We also grabbed some food, the aforementioned Rocket's, which turned out to be a pleasant afternoon as we whiled down the time before our new friends had to head back to their various corners of Ireland (and us to the airport to catch our flight home). This day had started with breakfast - Fudge accidentally ringing the wrong hotel number inviting us down at around 10am. Fortunately, the paper-thin walls meant we could hear them leaving so we popped down to the restaurant area to tuck into a delicious full Irish Breakfast, replete with smoky and rich white pudding, as well as tea and toast. We shared a few anecdotes before checking out, with a group of eight of us taking the efficient DART four stops into the city to Connolly Station. The station we got the train from was outside the impressive Aviva Stadium, while it was on this platform that I learned what TikTok was, not having heard of this before last Friday when I had to translate a Chinese phrase containing this into English.
Anyway, I digress. The Not New Year's Eve Party on the Saturday was great fun, a mix of cheesy club tunes from the DJ downstairs and drinking in the bar upstairs, with the latter taking precedence as the night wore on. I got into fursuit at around 8pm and danced in suit for about an hour and a half, with Dalrish in particular being particularly desperate for me to suit up. Swifty spent a lot of time in suit too, and it was great dancing with him, as well as noticing that the bar manager had the exact same attire as he did. It was incredibly hot though, with the columns supporting the building, which were aligned with glitter ball type mirrors, dripping in sweaty condensation. There was some modest finger food served on platters at 9:30pm, with the samosas being particularly delicious, while people started to drift away from about 11pm. We ended up in the bar with Fudge's crew, with us heading back down to the dancefloor at a couple of minutes to midnight for a fake New Year's Countdown. Shortly after this, I made a poorly timed joke about Wolfie's baldness and he got upset with me, leading to some bad blood for about twenty minutes. I felt bad as I thought I had ruined his night but we had soon made up.
With the bar closing at 12:30am, those who were staying in the hotel went to their rooms. We tried to have a room party with Fudge, but ten minutes into it, we heard a loud bang on the wall from his neighbours and so had to curtail it. This was perhaps just as well as we had to get up to pack and check out the next day, and also to have a shower as I had failed to have one after suiting. As I said, on Sunday we grabbed breakfast, showered, took the DART into Dublin, had food then went shopping, with the numbers dwindling as the day progressed due to the differing times everyone had booked their coaches and trains. Fudge had to go at 2pm back to Belfast, while we said goodbye to everyone at around 4pm outside the ha'penny bridge, so called because it used to cost a ha'penny to cross it. It was great seeing our Irish friends again, not to mention meeting some new ones too, and we do hope to be back there soon.
On our way back to the hotel, we decided to go via Against The Grain, a craft beer that kept popping up in my searches whenever I looked for good ones. This was a great one to be fair, and we shared three halves, including one of the Siren Caribbean Chocolate Cake ones. After this, it was back to the hotel to pick up our bags, then on to the Airport Shuttle Bus which was just around the corner from where we were staying. At the bus stop, the 702 bus route wasn't advertised, but Google suggested it did stop there, as did the official airport bus website. Fortunately, it did, meaning we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so much so that we managed to grab a couple more drinks in the bar, including one from the fantastically named Wicklow Wolf Brewery. The only shame here was we couldn't try them all, a frustration considering our flight ended up being delayed by about forty-five minutes. Still, we managed to get home eventually, and after a surprisingly short forty-minute flight, it was good to know that such a short trip is definitely viable in future, and without taking any time off work at all.
