The bustling city of Cork, about 60 miles south of Limerick, has good museums, fine dining, arts festivals and enjoyable outdoor spaces like the Fota Wildlife Park (www.fotawildlife.ie), and was just the subject of a "36 Hours" column in the Travel section, still available online at nytimes.com/travel.
The management has good intentions — the upstairs dining room is for adults only, remote from the singles scene and chattering children — but if you're seated up there next to a table of eight, all of them working on a second round of cocktails, you might as well throw up your hands and join the fun down in the bar.
"I might have dissuaded some by telling them, 'If you don't have a strong Japanese influence in your community, don't bid because it's not going to work.' " New York, Attanasio said, fit the desired picture, noting that the reliever, Sasaki, "has good friends there who wined and dined him".
Briarfields has good, unfussy rooms, a private path to the beach, and a surprise element of rather special dining.
A dumb robotic Web site, on the other hand, is less likely to have good opinions (it dines out far less often).
I had heard that Epcot had good places for dining, but we were not going there.
St. Andrews, a pretty college town famous for its legendary golf course, has tours of the University of St . Andrews castle ruins and good dining.
I liked the tavern at Gramercy, but I never had good food in the dining room".
Good dining chair covers can cost between $30 and $200.
The dining room at the Plaza Athénée has always had good bones, but it desperately needed a good face-lift.
