... or should I say Publin as Bridget and Toby fondly liked to call it. I found a cheap flight to Dublin with Aer Lingus for a quick weekend away. I stayed in the hopping night-life area of Tempel bar at a clean hostel, but one with a huge line in the morning for a single toaster. That's what happens when you are too cheap to buy your own breakfast. My other lasting memories of Dublin are of extremely talented buskers, cold wind and relief upon entering cozy pubs, lilting accents, and delicious ales and ciders. One other neat thing: everything is bilingual in English and Gaelic.My trip to the Guinness factory was a lot of fun. I saw the 9000 year lease of only 45 pounds a year Alex Guinness signed to rent the property (pretty good deal in today's terms!) and tasted the roasted barley that gives Guinness its full flavour. They also had a fun section looking at Guinness ad campaigns throughout the ages. I'm not sure if you can read the fine print, but to go along with the motto "Guinness is good for you" they claim that "Guinness is one of the most nourishing beverages, richer in carbohydrates than a glass of milk. That is one reason why it is so good when people are tired or exhausted" . What a riot! I don't think the calorie content is the only thing that makes it good...
The reward at the end of the tour is a pint up in the " Gravity Bar" with a view of the whole of Dublin and the surrounding hills. About as good weather as one can hope for in Ireland in the fall:
My perfect pint:
On a bus tour stuck in traffic next to the river Liffey (doesn't that just sound Irish?)
Cozy pub filled with knick-knacks where I had lunch.
Dublin Castle
Frieze on the original building of the Lever company (as in Lever 2000 soap). The top panels (see blurry example) show men working hard and getting their shirts all sweaty. The lower panels show women working even harder to get the shirts clean again.
The original Molly Malone (now also a great pub in Kensington in Calgary). She was apparently a very good-looking street merchant selling mussels. Today people have come up with various nicknames for her including "the dish with the fish", "the tart with the cart" and the "trollop with the scallops".
Trinity College
Lone rugby player practicing with his coach at Trinity College. Every good field kick landed with a thud against the chain-linked protected windows of the dormitories in the background. Would I ever hate to have the dorm room looking out onto the rugby pitch.
I went on a literary pub crawl which was a lot of fun. We hopped from bar to bar with a pair of actors who recounted some of the interesting bits of history which had occurred on there, one pub being the setting of a book by James Joyce, another being frequented by Oscar Wilde, and yet another where rebels hatched plots against the English. I think O'Neills is the rebel-plotting one.
I'm very happy with my ale and some new friends who also joined me for the Guinness tour.
