Dublin

Dublin
(Nov 6 - 8)

So our last stop in Europe was Dublin.  We stayed at the Charles Stewart Guesthouse, which was one of our larger hotels, so that was nice.  We pretty much dropped our bags and headed down to the pub for a bite to eat, because Katie was starving.

Then we felt like we needed a drink, so we headed to the old Guinness Brewery (now called the Guinness Storehouse).

Katie was cold, so she went into babushka mode.

It was a little bit Disney-esque, but you actually could learn quite a bit about the old brewery, the process of making casks, some of the old ad campaigns, that kind of thing.  The tour starts with the original 900 year lease of the property

About half way up the pint glass-shaped tour, we noticed that they had decorated somewhat oddly for, well, Ireland.

I mean, we knew that Europe paid attention to the American elections, but really?  Turns out the American embassy had rented out the brewery to watch the election.  I'm sure these weren't for us, but we took advantage anyway.

As we continued the tour, you can learn how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness Draught, so that was fun.

(side note:  In the above picture you can actually see both of my wife's awesome birthday presents to me.  A new watch and a suit!  She's awesome.  OK, back to the beer.)

And of course the best part of learning how to pour a beer is drinking it.  We headed up to the gravity bar to enjoy our beers.  The room is full of mirrored tabletops with lights shining down on them so that the reflections on the ceiling look like the head of a Guinness. (Katie seems to think that was intentional.)

Then we headed to Temple Bar for a drink before dinner (I feel like there's a theme here).  They had the obligatory Irish drinking songs, but there was also a couple of musicians (guitar and banjo) who were quite good and made some of the old standards much more interesting, so that was fun.  Katie and I tried a couple of new beers from 8 degrees (Sunburnt Irish Red and Howling Gale Ale) which were both pretty good and waited until our reservation.

Since Katie's awesome, she made me a birthday dinner reservation at White Friar Grill, which turned out to be excellent.  We started with a bone marrow appetizer and had venison over gnocchi and rabbit leg with mashed potatoes for mains.  For dessert we had creme brulee with Jameson and cherries for dessert!  It was awesome, just like my wife.  (d'awww)

The next day we grabbed breakfast at the hotel.  We're told this is a traditional Irish breakfast, but it seemed more like something I would have made from whatever happened to be left in the pantry and fridge while hungover on a Saturday morning in college.

Then we went wandering around town and ended up at the Jameson Distillery (by accident, of course), but not before we saw this amazing selection of movies currently available for viewing.

Since it was already 11:00 in the morning, we had a drink while waiting for the tour to start.  The Jameson Distillery was also a bit Disney-esque, but again, still kind of informative.  Katie received the golden ticket at the beginning of the tour and so was able to do a whiskey tasting at the end. She was kind enough to share with me.  Not exactly a fair fight, as the other whiskeys they have you taste are Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker Black...  But Katie enjoyed all the whiskey anyway.

After our morning drinking, we went to the Black Sheep (kind of a theme for this trip...) for a drink and some food.  They have an excellent beer selection with lots of local microbrews and very good food.  We split some thick-cut fries with chili and a leek sausage with stout.  Also, apparently the light in there makes me look like a goober.

They also had excellent over-urinal advertisements.

We finished the night wandering about London and stumbled upon more than one of these on the sidewalk.

Apparently they've excavated various bronze-age and earlier sites in Dublin and these stones commemorate what has been found.

The next day we met a very interesting taxi driver and headed back to the states.  Hooray!

There was a couple in front of us who were early to mid twenties and had never been on a plane before (or so I'm assuming from the sheer amount of movement of their seats) and a gentleman across the aisle who was either very nervous about flying or Irish.  I took this picture a few hours in to the flight while he was in the bathroom.  It's kind of hard to tell from the pic, but they're all empties.

If you're anything like me, you rarely get anything to eat on an airplane that isn't peanuts or pretzels, so whatever they feed you is kind of a treat.  This is, of course, simply false optimism.  Here's the Italian sandwich.  I'm quite frankly amazed that the Food Channel isn't running specials on these guys.

Well, that's it for Europe!  Now on to Philadelphia (and phones with working cell and data service!)...