Jess was also getting up around that time so we ate and began the laborious process of picking out what we were going to wear for our fun-filled day. All the clothes we brought are super cute but we had to figure out what cute was the /right/ cute for this particular day. We eventually got that sorted and got the map situation worked out because the GPS might crap out again so we had a physical map at least that we could attempt to follow. We had a reservation for the Everglade Hotel’s Derry Girls Tea Experience booked for 1pm so we headed to the car around 12:30pm. Even though the hotel was supposed to be only a 5 minute drive we didn’t want to risk missing our time in case we got lost or I panicked and turned us down the wrong street or something. It was a good thing we left early though because we ended up having to go back to the hotel because we remembered the front desk saying something about partially validating parking for the Quayside garage. Turns out we were right to do that, because you hand your parking ticket to them and they give you one that’s got the discount on it to put into the payment machines! At the front the agent asked us where we were coming from and we said Deland, Florida and he had a laugh because he had a friend who went to that exact place while participating in some program where different places basically exchange one Protestant and one Catholic with one Protestant and Catholic from another place for a semester of school! Funny that!
With that "it's a small world" experience had and the ticket partially validated we went back, paid for parking, and were on our way! We had to cross a bridge to get to the Everglades hotel and that was a neat experience we hadn’t had yet, driving over a bridge, but I got confused at the exit and turned left instead of right so when we hit a roundabout I had to go all the way around, and then Jess didn’t realize the turn into the hotel was coming up so fast so we had to turn around and go back again! Classic us. But we did make it literally right on the dot at 1pm for our Derry Girls Tea. And it was FABULOUS! It was everything we could have wanted and more! We were seated at this table with these fabulous plush chairs and couches and our waiter asked us if we wanted tea or coffee. I went with coffee, Jess got tea. When he came back with this he explained how the experience worked: All the food is based on food from different Derry Girls episodes and scenes, we can have as much of it and the tea and coffee as we like, if we want more of anything just ask. Included was also one mocktail or cocktail, a strawberry daiquiri or some three-alcohol drink with Sprite that I can't recall the name of respectively, and those we only get one of and would have to pay per after the first. With that he left to get us the tea tower of all our food and we were left to enjoy the whole experience. We ate, drank, chatted, and had such an incredible time!
During the meal Jessica remembered there being something about a duck that was advertised with the experience, so she asked if they still did that and our waiter said no, but our drinks now came with special Derry Girls coasters that we could keep! Ya, souvenirs! The whole thing was just grand, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience, and to think it was a last minute addition to our plans! We felt so lush sitting in the beautiful dining area enjoying all our Derry Girls treats at our leisure! We ended up staying there for about and hour and forty-five minutes, just having a wonderful time. Everyone was so nice, so accommodating, so agreeable, and the food and drinks were so good, I think it’s gonna be hard to top that experience for the rest of the trip! But we’ll see! While there however, funny enough, one of the waiters asked us where we were from and we said Deland, Florida and he told us that he had been there before when he was a student. We asked if he was part of that student exchange we'd just been told about and he said no, he'd just happened to chose that spot to visit when he want to America. How bizarre. Something about Derry drew us from Deland, and I guess something about Deland draws people to Derry!
From there we drove the car back to the garage, got a new slip, and had a quick refresh at the hotel before heading out on foot to find the Tower Museum to see the Derry Girls exhibit! We found The Wall right away, we’d gone through it a few times on our unplanned drives through Derry, and we ended up at the opening that was right in front of the Tower Museum! Jess was bang on right with her directions! Go figure! We paid the six pounds each to get into the exhibit and then added 3 pounds for a Derry Girls chocolate bar I saw that I really wanted, which is probably for the best because we paid to get dollars exchanged into pounds and we can’t use them anywhere but here in Derry so we literally /have/ to spend them. That money is basically already gone so it’s like the stuff we buy with it is free. Kinda.
The Derry Girls exhibit is technically an addition to the History of Derry exhibit which is a permanent part of the museum. You start in the Derry Girls exhibit then go through a cool brick tunnel that takes you to a full timeline exhibit of the full history of Northern Ireland, especially Derry, from the dawn of man basically to present day. The Derry Girls part was our main point in going, but we were interested in learning more about Derry also! The Derry Girls exhibit was delightful! There was an augmented reality thing you could do where you used a tablet to explore Erin’s room, clips from the show playing, interviews with the creator of the series, and props and costumes from the show on display! Clare’s outfit was right upfront, and the had the Jesus statue with the head glued upside-down, set pieces from Erin’s home, and lots more I’m probably forgetting. It’s a small exhibit, just a temporary thing apparently, but it was very nice and a good way I think to get people into the museum to learn more about Derry history. It got us in!
The rest of the exhibit was excellent, as we traveled through the full timeline of Derry and all its hardship. Boy this city got invaded and destroyed and burned so many times. But it’s still there! The Troubles aren’t really a huge part of it, which I thought was interesting. There’s only a few informational texts about it at the end, about the same amount of space as was given to any other event in Derry history, but the museum didn’t seem to care to dwell on them too much. They’re just another part of Derry’s long, colorful, and complicated history. The exhibit ended with a movie that Jess and I didn’t watch because we were the last group in the museum and we didn’t want to make the crew stay open too much later on our account, even though they didn’t have to kick us out for another half-hour technically. The movie exited back into the Derry Girls exhibit, a special room with more costumes and props for the show. We took some pictures, did a Derry Girls quiz they had, left feedback on the exhibit, and headed out fully satisfied with that experience also! It was just what we’d been hoping for, entertaining and educational! Totally worth the six pounds each!
After that Jess wanted us to find something called the Craft Village which was supposed to be somewhere near the Tower Museum but we hadn’t found it on the way to the Derry Girls mural so we decided to see if it was behind, rather than next to, the museum, and we were right! It was 4:30ish by then so we expected most businesses to be closing up, but the Cottage Craft Gallery and Coffee Shop was open so we headed in for a small coffee. I asked about the Caramel Macchiato on the menu and the barista explained that it’s not really a full coffee, just a little thing, and I was like Perfect! Exactly what I was looking for! Couldn’t have sold me on it better if he was trying! That came out pretty quick, though we did have a few seconds to take a look at the Titanic themed coffee and teas. Interesting. And weird.
Coffee in hand we found one of those shops that sells cheap, tacky Ireland stuff to tourists and we were like “perfect!” cause we were sent on a mission by our coworkers to get them certain things and one of those things was a keychain of Northern Ireland and Ireland, which we hadn’t gotten yet. We did indeed find perfect keychains, one that’s a nice Derry/Ireland keychain, and one with Sister Michael from Derry Girls saying “Please please, don’t come crying to me” which we think she’ll get a kick out of even though she hasn’t seen the show. We considered some other stuff, but the rest we decided to wait on and see if we still wanted for anyone come the morning.
From there we began our hunt for different Derry Girls spots around the Walls. We began with a search for the Derry Girls mural, which someone gave us directions to after seeing us looking at one of the many maps throughout the city. He pointed us in exactly the right direction and we had found it in no time for pictures and admiration! It’s a great mural, they did excellent work with it. Also it’s of the Derry Girls, so how could it be anything but grand? By then we figured we should use a bathroom so we headed into a mall of some kind right by the mural because that seemed like a place that would have public bathrooms that wouldn’t leave us exposed to comment and we were right, we found some on the 4th floor, which isn’t really the 4th floor because it’s also kinda the first because Derry is full of these sharp hills and the other side of the mall is built by the hill so the fourth floor has an exit of its own. We checked a some kind of nerd store to see what that looked like in Ireland and it was exactly as you’d expect anywhere so there’s that.
Now we were trying to find certain spots from the show, specifically the place on the walls that the Derry Girls hung out on in a number of scenes. We thought at first we remembered it being a bridge and checked out the Peace Bridge, but that was built in 2010 so they wouldn’t have used that. Still, we decided to take a walk across it and check out the walls on the other side of it, take some photos, be tourists! Then we took the walk back and decided to see if there was a way to get up onto the wall, and of course there were many, many stairs to it that we had missed somehow, so we climbed up by the Tower Museum and started on what is called the Grand Parade, a one mile walk on the walls of the walled city of Derry. It’s a great walk, probably amazing to do a run on in the morning, and the views were spectacular!
From the Walls we spotted the “Now Entering Free Derry” sign and climbed down to go take some pictures in front of it. We’d seen it the other day when we got turned around trying to find parking so we knew it was close, but it was nice to be able to spot it from a height then just walk right towards it. From the sign we saw this really long windy staircase that lead up the hill we’d just walked down back to the Walls and we’d laughed about it when we first saw it cause, who would climb that crazy long staircase? But then we realizes it’s us, we would, cause now we wanted to see what it was like so off we went up, up, up and what do you know, they led right to the part of the Walls we’d been looking for! Perfect! We got back up onto the wall and took our pictures and confirmed that this had to be the spot we were thinking of, and then continued our Grand Parade. It’s a great walk and my heels sounded very nice clacking along the cobblestone and brick and it was altogether a very lovely ambient experience.
Back at the Tower Museum we decided it was probably time for food, as it was nearing 7pm, and we wanted to check out the bar and grill right across from our hotel, The Trinity. We mostly just wanted to see the inside of it as it looked fabulous from the outside and we were right! It was gorgeous in there, a decadent tribute to the Ottoman style of architecture. We were seated almost immediately and three different people asked us if we needed drinks or were ready to order, which was interesting. I wonder if there aren’t really assigned wait staff at the place, just whoever gets to who first. Or maybe it was just a busy evening, it was a Friday! We both got a drink, Jess the Candy Stripe and I the Look At Me, Look At Me, and Jess got a sweet chili chicken burger while I got the vegetarian lasagne. I wanted to try it specifically because it said it had mushrooms and I’d never had lasagne, vegetable or otherwise, with mushrooms. The food came quick and the drinks quicker and everything was delicious! The sweet chili chips that came with my order were SO tasty, and the house salad Jess got was loaded with vegetables, and both out entrees were scarfed down in a hurry because neither of us had realized how hungry we were after walking around for 6 hours without food until we had our meals before us.
One of the waiters was particularly funny, though his name escapes me. It was a very White Boy name though. He delivered our drinks and asked if we were American, and we said yes, and he asked from where in America and we said Florida and he sighed and was like “Oh no!” and we all had a laugh. He came over a few times and asked us things like “Do we miss being surrounded by dangerous animals” and “Why are you two dressed like you hate each other?” Jess got up to find the bathroom at one point and he found her in the completely wrong spot and transformed into a tour guide, putting on a posh accent to tell her all the details of the architecture and design (that’s how we know it’s in the Ottoman style) before arriving at the destination and, with a flourish, saying “Your toilets, madame!” After we’d eaten and paid the bill we saw him again on the way out where he asked if we were leaving and upon recieving the affermitive said “Good riddance!” and we had a laugh and said goodbye. Very fun place, great atmosphere, and excellent food, though we were particularly hungry so we might be biased on that account.
We got back to the hotel, then remembered we’d left the box of leftovers from the Derry Girls Tea in the car and had to go back to get that, but we wanted to check on the car anyway so we headed out, grabbed that, headed back, then were officially in for the evening. Jess took a shower while I tried to find a streaming service on my tablet that worked to so I could do my Friday Night Movie Workout, which I’d done every Friday for 3 years and didn’t want to skip even in Ireland. I discovered Netflix worked and they have all the Studio Ghibli films on there here in Northern Ireland so I picked that and went for it, doing the best I could without any of my workout gear. So mostly just push-ups and squats and lunges. Still, a workout’s a workout! With that done it was about 11pm so it was time to settle in, relax, and get a good night's sleep to prepare for all the excitement tomorrow promised!
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