Today started early with a 5:01am sunrise and I really felt like I saw ALL of Dublin today! First of all, breakfast at the hotel was incredible - the coffee may have been the best coffee I'd ever had...that could have been partly because I had 7 hours of horizontal sleep and it didn't come from an airplane, but I'll take it. I also adore that everything comes with roasted tomatoes (I ate a few for you, mom!)
Set out to Trinity College first thing to go see the campus, the Book of Kells exhibit, and of course the long room at the library. So much history to soak in and the staff there was more than willing to answer my 400 questions. Marble statues never fail to fascinate me. From there, walked to two of the most well known churches - First Christ and St. Patrick's Cathedral. I really just don't think there's anything more beautiful than historic places of worship - there was even youth choir practice going on at one point. Stopped and grabbed an Irish coffee at Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin - wasn't quite as good as the one from yesterday, but I'm on a quest to evaluate them all, so stay tuned.
Met two of the girls from my tour for a historic tasting at Pearce Distillery, which actually took place in an old cathedral. Tiernan, our bar master had tons of history on the city to share!
Rewind to when I was talking about the two churches I went to - he enlightened us that George Roe, one of the founders of Irish whiskey in the early 19th century, donated a ton of money to have Christ Church remodeled. Not too long after, good ol' Arthur Guinness decided he couldn't look bad and ultimately donated money to St. Pats to have similar updates. Competition is fierce in Ireland...
Onto our tour at Guinness. It was...an experience. The self-guided tour was well-done, ending with a pint on the 6th floor with 360-degree views of the city. It was very packed with tour groups, so we weren't able to learn to pour our own, but we had some lunch, made some friends and went on our way to Jameson. You all know my love for Jameson (which I quickly learned the locals call a Jemmy,) so I was pretty pumped. Our tour guide was amazing! Raised in an entire family that worked at the distillery, even back during Prohibition, this girl had some passion for what she did! Learned a ton about the process and history within the city and finally started to understand the differences in Bourbon, Scotch, Whiskey and Irish Whiskey. Don't ask me tomorrow...but informative to say the least. Stopped and had some pretty awesome fresh fish tacos and ventured back to the hotel.
Bus leaves at 8:30 tomorrow morning for Galway - I'm excited to get out into the natural beauty of Ireland for the next few days! But first...more good coffee in the AM. Cheers!
Comments