Merry in Derry*

I didn't know what to expect from Northern Ireland. A friend from my not-so-long-ago university days invited three of us up to stay in her parents' swank B&B in Derry. Having recently just seen the 2002 film, Bloody Sunday, I felt fully informed of the 'Troubles' that had beset the area in the 70's...you know, because I watched one film. (I also recently watched Michael Collins...I'm assuming those troubles were the indirect result of Julia Roberts' cringe-inducing accent AND, as a bonus, her singing.) However, that said, my shocking lack of knowledge about, well...everything else, had me wondering if check-points, snipers and bad-ass long leather coats were still the order of the day up north. Indeed my ignorance ran so deep, that it wasn't until confronted with a map of Ireland in a dumpy reststop on the bus journey up that I discovered Derry is so far north. I thought it was by the border. I should really do more research.

Armed with this key geographical knowledge, I managed fairly well for myself, until we headed off for the Giant's Causeway that Sunday. When one of our party commented, 'Wow, it's so clear you can see Scotland!' I momentarily lost my bearings thinking we were on the west coast, not the east. But had we been on the west coast, that would have put us back in the Republic. I should have studied that map longer.

But here's the other stuff I learned while in Derry:

-They take euros! I only learned this after extracting numerous pounds sterling from an ATM...oh well, at least I got to see some 'foreign' money.

-When the weather sucks in Derry, it does not screw around. Saturday found us nearly reduced to rubble between blasts of hail, torrential winds that would give any nor'easter a run for its money, and a constant driving rain that made us all vigorously curse ourselves for not having a single umbrella between the four of us.

-The used bookstores are fantastic in Derry. (Okay, full disclosure, I only visited one, but it was good enough to indicate the town has a standard for this sort of thing.)

-Just because I don't drink doesn't mean the tour of the Bushmills distillery was anything less than fascinating. Although, if one certain member of our party had asked me one more time if I wanted a drink, I might have punched him.

-It's a good thing the B&B we stayed in had a distressingly cute bulldog in residence by name of Bertie, otherwise who knows who would have been blamed for the explosive diarrhea in Room 5.

*Perhaps I shall start a blog for every city I can create a catchy rhyme for. 'Dork in New York' 'Quite a Show in Toronto' 'From Boston to Austin' Please, feel free to submit your own.