Weekend in Dublin

We're back home safe and sober after a long weekend in Dublin, Ireland. We landed there early Friday morning, around 5:30am. After a 3 hour nap we headed out to the Guinness Storehouse for the brewery tour. There were no lines to deal with and thanks to the Tasting Room and Perfect Pint training (we are now certified Perfect Pint Pourers - even Larry The Lizard) we had plenty of Guinness in us before we ever had a meal or even water. Feeling very Irish.

The Guinness Brewery is HUGE. It covers 66 acres and with all of its old brick buildings and black gates it looks just like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. We spent hours there and learned a ton about Guinness, like the Guinness Book of World Records comes from the same family - I never put that together before but it all started to settle barroom arguments. I also learned that I love to eat roasted barley. Who knew?

Then we wandered around the Temple Bar area of Dublin for the first of many times. That is the "cultural" area and full of the most pubs. We caught some Irish music and dancing, even got a free CD for being from Boston because there are more Irish in Boston than in Ireland (it seems anyway).

Over the next few days we drank a lot of Guinness, even had a table with a built-in tap at our hotel, toured the Jameson Distillery, drank whiskey, ate malted barley, saw the Book of Kells, toured Dublin Castle, Christ Church, Kilmainham Gaol (prison), Dublinia, and Trinity College, visited many pubs and met lots of cool people, well except for one drunk douche bag that I had to scare off from bothering a 15 year old girl. And don't get fooled into visiting the Bad Ass Cafe - it should be called the Lame Colon.