Saturday in Dublin

Had a pretty good sleep last night and recovered from our tour - really wished we had our own room but it was good to have a bit of a sleep-in regardless. We got up just in time for some free breakfast at the hostel, checked some emails and then made our way to the Guinness factory via the river, while also seeing 'Christchurch Cathedral' on the way. The factory is huge and takes up several blocks. The tourist part has been created in the old fermentation area of the factory and is quite impressive, taking up several floors with a large, pint-glass shaped glass atrium in the middle. We seemed to arrive at a reasonable time to beat the crowds although it was still busy.

I've reversed my previous dislike of this dark ale for what I hope to be genuine reasons but you still have to admire the genius of this marketing triumph - the building is packed with people, many who probably don't even like beer. We both really enjoyed the tour and it's generally very well done, though some bits are bordering on the cheesy. We were sure to visit the section on enjoying Guinness responsibly where we were assured that we didn't actually have to drink the stuff - it was 'our choice'. Here we heard a regretful tale about how Jimmy had a really engaging conversation with some bird after a few glasses of wine and then didn't know what to say to her when sober - this is supposed to put people off drink??!! We enjoyed a pint at the gravity bar up top and admired the views of the city, before heading to the obligatory stop at the gift shop.

After this, we stopped for an non-nutritional snack at a convenience store on our way to Kilmainham Gaol. It was only after much walking that we read on our map that it wasn't to scale - no kidding!! Kilmainham is an old Victorian-style prison where many from the Easter rising were held and then executed in 1916. The tour was very informative and the place has been restored into a great historic place. After, this we were a bit buggered and headed back to the hostel.

We then decided to head to 'Temple Bar' - the bar district near our hostel for a look and some food. We stopped at an alright looking kebab place hoping to get something similar to the great kebabs back home. I did my best to communicate to the English-as a-second-language order taker, emphasising 'Falafel' every time she couldn't understand what I was saying. But it still didn't work and we ended up with two taco kebabs - not really fancying grotty beef mince, we ate the bread and cheese and then retreated to a dairy to try and make-up for our crap meal with a fruit smoothie. Clare's was fermented so we decided we'd had enough bad-luck and headed back to the hostel (while carefully dodging all the human and canine feces, spew, glass, piss and cigarette butts - this place is so dirty there aren't even many pigeons around!). We recently just headed out to a quiet close-by bar and enjoyed a couple of final pints in Ireland.