Very Irish day of sightseeing

Today was my second day in Dublin, but my first serious sightseeing day. Yesterday, I arrived at Dublin airport at about 10:50am. It was about midday before I made it into central Dublin to meet Cormac. We went back to his place and had lunch. I went out again and had a wander around St Stephen's Green and Trinity College. Cormac met me again after he'd finished work for the day. We went to the tourist information centre and then had coffee.

We then went back to his place for dinner before he went out to play "tag". Susan got home before long, and we stayed in to watch the Australia vs Croatia match. Can you believe not a single pub we could find was showing this game, not even the "Downunder Bar"? Everyone was showing the Brazil vs Japan game, and who cares about that. So shame on them, because the Australia game had everything, even a player getting THREE yellow cards before getting sent off!

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about today's outing! I caught the tram into St Stephen's Green. It was such a lovely day, sunny but not hot, that I was really overwhelmed by the beauty of the park and wandered around for a while, taking pictures and watching bees (and trying to take photos of bees). I got back on track, and went to the tourist office to get a Dublin Pass. I then walked across town to catch another tram over to the Old Jameson Distillery. There I went on the tour and learned all about Irish whiskey, or "water of life". The tour included a Jameson whiskey at the end.

Next I went up "The Chimney", which is a viewing tower from which you can see all around Dublin. I didn't spend long up there because I had to go and meet Cormac at Kilmainham Gaol. It took me longer to get there than I thought it would, but that was ok because it also took Cormac longer to get there than he thought it would. Although we had just missed the start of a tour, they let us join it anyway. This was handy because we would have had to wait about half an hour until the next one.

The Gaol was interesting for many reasons. It has two wings, built at different times and so very different in style. The west wing is dark and gloomy. The east wing is well lit via sky lights, and also features in "The Italian Job" (the original). In historical terms, the gaol holds significance in Irish history. After the Easter Rising in 1916, the leaders of rebellion were arrested and subsequently executed at the Gaol. While the rising itself had little public support, making martyrs of the leaders aided the cause. I learnt everything I know about Irish history since I arrived in Dublin, so I hope my brief summary has done it some justice.

Next, Cormac and I went to the Guinness Storehouse. It's a self guided tour, so we were able to look around at the exhibits as we saw fit. We learnt how Guinness is made and we looked at the section on advertising, but we were fairly keen to get up to the Galaxy Bar to get our pints (well, Cormac was) and check out the view.

I was pretty nervous about the prospect of drinking a pint of Guinness. However, it wasn't as bad as I expected and was definitely better than Guinness in Australia. Unfortunately, it was getting late, the bar was about to close and we were meeting Susan in town so I didn't finish my pint, but I probably got through about half of it. I could have continued if I'd had more time I reckon.

We met Susan and went to a pub for dinner. This continued the Irish theme of the day. I had beef and Guinness stew with vegetables and two types of potato, roasted and mashed.