Day Twenty-One - 1/10/2012 - Cork

     Mondays are my most intensive day of classes, with five hours of modules.  Luckily, they are all in the Enterprise Center, a building that is a short five-minute walk from my house, rather than the main campus, a twenty-minute walk away.
     The coat of arms for Cork City depicts a ship on the water between two red towers bearing white flags with red crosses.  The flags are known as FitzGerald flags, which come from the dynasty of the same name, when Cork lay in the Earldom of Desmond, during the 1450s.  A ribbon adorns the crest below the water, bearing the Latin inscription "Statio Bene Fida Carinis" meaning "A safe harbour for ships".  Cork goes by various nicknames like, The Rebel City, referring to its status as a county famed for its ability to resist most types of colonization but also a site of frequent battles during the War of Independence.  It is also referred to as Leeside, for its place along the river.  Some even go so far to call it The Real Capital.  It is the second largest city in Ireland, with a distinct culture from Dublin.  Walking around the city, these names and symbols can be spotted literally everywhere, from the name of the pub, to the side of a theatre.
     For dinner that night, we decided to try some place close to home, and happened upon a restaurant we had passed once, the Bierhalle, on Pope's Quay.  To our surprise, and later delight, Monday was wing night (quite unlike the "wing Wednesdays" in the US) which meant that all wing dishes were half off.  The wings held up to the general higher standard of meats here, but the marinade on these wings was so buttery that it left an aftertaste similar to that of movie popcorn, a strange yet entertaining flavour paradox.