New Thing #81 - L/S/I, Day 13 - Dublin

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Slept in. Well, as much sleeping in as we could when it's light at 4 in the morning. We had a pretty leisurely day planned, so we didn't need to be up as early as every other day this entire trip. Well, as leisurely as one could get while trying to cram all of Dublin into one day.

It was our last full day in Ireland, and we planned on making the most of it. I think we were all starting to run on empty, but maybe that was just me. My body was giving up on me, so maybe it was good that we would be going home tomorrow. But, in spirit, I wanted to stay much longer! At least my head/sinuses were MUCH better by now. Either the allergy medicine had finally kicked in, or I wasn't as allergic to Ireland as I was to Scotland.

We had a lot planned for today, and we managed to hit the highlights of what we wanted: Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trinity College, shopping on Grafton Street and the Guinness Storehouse. We had hoped to see Dublin Castle as well, but there was some major event thing going on, so it was all closed off and blocked from view. :(

G is for Generator Hostel. Or Goober.

Gaub. Nikki Gaub. 

We got to explore more of our hostel this morning. This is the front desk.

Table made from stacks of book and wooden boards.

Breakfast at this adorable cafe. I wish we had found it the day before. I had a delicious breakfast sandwich that I wanted more of!

Apparently I sell shoes to men with really large feet... 

An old church we stumbled upon while trying to find Christ Church. Our map sucked, so the Map Maven was not at her best today.

Christ Church Cathedral. We found it!

Don't go down there. Don't do it. It is dangerous to do so.

Crazy bush/tree that looked like a pile of snakes.

Coming up to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Park area next to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

Beautiful St. P. It was too big for me to get all of it in one photo. (That's what she said.)

Yes, I took a picture of the trash can. Or litter bin? 

It cost money to go in. We were having none of that.

Streets of Dublin. We spent a solid hour or so in one gift shop buying random crap. 

Um, okay? Hangover 3 car?

More Boots!

I loved the door knockers on some of the buildings/houses.

The entrance to Trinity College.

The Irish opposite of "Regulatooors.....Mount Up!"

Buildings on the campus of Trinity College.

I can't imagine trying to go to college here when it's crazy busy with tourists all the time.

We wanted to see this. We wanted to see this really badly. But, not badly enough to wait in the line of roughly 100 people for lord only knows how long. We were on a mission to see as much as possible today, and standing in line didn't fit into our plan.

Hey, this looks familiar. We saw the same thing at the Vatican two years ago!

I love all the architectural details.

All I saw was the first line. And I couldn't stop laughing.

I think this was a library. Or maybe a government building.

Maybe I can get a job here.

These signs were hilarious. They also let you know that there was a 500 Euro fine for littering or tossing gum on the ground. Imagine if we had such steep fines here. And imagine if they were enforced on a regular basis.

A little burger joint for lunch. It had started to rain pretty steadily at this point, so we found something as quickly as we could.

Ha...they call their fries "chubby chips'.

Yep. This happened.

My lonely burger. I wasn't that hungry and couldn't handle more fries. Not the greatest burger in the world, but also not the worst.

Random church we walked by on our way to the Guinness Storehouse. I thought it was perty.

We have arrived at the beer mecca of Ireland!

The Guinness Storehouse was pretty cool. It was a multi-level building showcasing the history behind Guinness, the quality ingredients that go into brewing it, marketing campaigns over the years, a gift shop, restaurants and a bar, just to name a few. We took our time winding through each floor learning a little as we went. We started to speed things up after awhile, because there was free beer at the end!

Some old tools.

It's all about the ingredients.

I liked all of the info graphics they used in the building.

That's a lot o' barley.

Waterfall in the building.

It's a pretty impressive "museum" of sorts. Lots of cool props and infographics.

Who knew there was an EXACT amount of time required to poor a perfect Guinness? Not me.

True story.

There was also quite a few random things throughout.

The architecture was cool.

A fish riding a bicycle? I'm not sure that's really what I would think of when drinking Guinness...

They had a Hall of Fame wall of famous people drinking Guinness. I love Paul Rudd!

Trying to recreate the photo above. The angle was a bit off...

An homage to different decades?

Instructions on how to pour the perfect Guinness. Steps 1 & 2...

...3 & 4...

...5 & 6.

Remember 119.5 seconds!

We didn't get any food here, although we did try some chocolate made with Guinness and it was delicious. I also grabbed a few recipes of different things using Guinness. I'll have to try those out sometime.

After we finished our tour, we headed up to the Gravity Bar where our entrance ticket entitled us to one free beer.

There was fabulous view of Dublin from up here!

Letting the surge settle.

Fresh Guinness!

It was crazy busy up here, and we were lucky to find a seat. It's a good thing we finally did because my feet were so swollen and on fire. I'm not sure why they decided to start misbehaving now, but I guess after two weeks of constant walking, they gave up. I was pretty cranky at how they felt, but beer and a seat helped out some.

We also spent quite a bit of time in the gift shop before we left and Nikki was pretty pumped about her purchases.

After we finished with the Guinness tour, we hopped a cab back to our hostel to relax for the rest of the afternoon. We had a few hours to kill before our final adventure of the trip, and I think we were all ready for a little R&R. Plus, we needed to start the packing process since we'd be up early to make our flight. My feet were thanking me for finally taking a break.

Seriously. Greatest thing ever.

Outside our hostel.

You could pay to rent these bikes. When you were done, you just returned to one of the stations. Pretty cool.

Our final event of our trip would be dinner and traditional music at The Irish House Pub. I failed to mention that a few months before our trip, Brenda entered a contest through viator.com to try to win some Irish vacay packages. Well, due to her fabulous haiku (which she doesn't remember), she ended up winning two tickets to five different things all over Ireland. We were able to use three of them: the Belfast/Giant's Causeway tour, the Guinness Storehouse tour and this Irish House Party. We only had to split the cost of the third ticket for all of them, so it was a pretty awesome deal. (The other two items weren't anywhere near where we were going to be.)

Where the music would be happening.

The dining area was upstairs.

We started the evening off with a meal, and we had a few starters, entrees and desserts to choose from.  I started off with the Dublin Coddle: sausages, bacon and tomatoes in a potato, onion and herb broth. Not bad.

Dinner was Beef and Guinness stew with potatoes, carrots and celery. Also not bad, but also not as good as the one I had in Galway.

Dessert was pretty tasty! Chocolate cake with Bailey's Cheesecake Filling. Yum!

After dinner, we made our way back downstairs, and these four greeted us. They're part of a larger ensemble that breaks off into different smaller formations like this to perform. They were really good! I even bought a CD afterwards for my brother-in-law.

Just getting warmed up here.

Rocky Road to Dublin.

Sorry the dancer is so dark, she was in front of the lights and I don't have a flash for the video.

This guy was incredible on that bagpipe. He spent a solid five minutes or so showing us how it worked and it looked more complicated than trying to invent time travel. Kudos to this guy for being so damn good at it.

What's that she's dancing with, you ask?

Yep, it's a broom. I guess there is a traditional Irish dance involving a broom...

This one is pretty festive!

This chick was incredibly talented. She sang, played the fiddle AND the harp, danced like a champion and her hair was amazing. Dammit.

See, she plays the harp beautifully.

Makes me feel like dancing!

This guy was a great accordion player, but he looked as if he would rather be at home doing his taxes than on that stage.

All of these guys were incredible musicians. Not only was this guy playing the bagpipe, but he also played the flute and at least one other instrument. Incredible.

And finally, an homage to possibly one of the greatest bands out of Ireland, U2.

The trip had taken its toll on us, so by the time the festivities were over, we were ready to head home for the night. We were really sad to be saying goodbye to Ireland in the morning. It treated us well (despite the weather).

Dublin at night.

More of our hostel. We weren't really ever here long enough to partake in any of the rooms/activities they had here.

Pretty cool chandelier made from Jameson bottles. The Jameson distillery was a block away from our hostel, but we never made it there. So, this is about as close as we got.