Dublin's Tight

Hey Gang!

This is my second time typing this because the first time the internet crashed.  I'm going to try and sum up our day as well and quickly as I can due to the terrible internet we have at our new hostel.

We walked the city of Dublin today from 11AM to about 10PM (it doesn't get completely dark here until about 10:30, it's wild), and in my estimation we walked about 9 or 10 miles.  It was well worth it though.  Megan and I both love this city, and we're very glad we came here instead of Paris (nothing against Paris, we just really like it here).

We started out at St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The church it self, and the gardens that surround most of it, were stunning.  We relaxed for quite some time in the gardens and got some great pictures as well.  Basically we saw as much of the inside as we could without wasting our money, and more importantly 2 hours of our day.

We then went over to Christ Church, which is huuuggeee (not nearly as big as St. Pauls Cathedral in London, but with dublin being a much smaller city it seemed almost as large).  Once again we languished for quite some time outside the church and got some great pictures.  We also skipped the tour again, mainly due to the fact we just didn't have 2 hours of our time to devote to it.  It was awesome though.

After that we made our way over to the Dublin Castle.  That was great because it was so big they actually had a fair amount of it open to the public.  This meant we could see a fair amount of it without paying for it or spending 2 hours looking through it.  Once again, we got some great pictures and took in everything we could in about 30 minutes and headed out.

Right after we left we saw a gift shop, which turned out to be great.  It was great for Megan because she got to do a little shopping (it was a pretty extensive gift shop), and it was great for me because I got to try on funny hats and have Megan take pictures of me.

After that we started making our way to the Guinness Factory, and along the way stopped for about 15 minutes at St. Audoen's Church, which wasn't nearly as big or fancy as the first two we saw.  However, it was still really cool, and we both enjoyed it.

We then went to the Guinness Brewery.  I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about it, because we were there for a while and saw a lot of things.  It was really cool to hear about the history of the company, the brewing process, the challenges in transporting the beer back in the day, the marketing, and also getting a taste test on their 7th floor "gravity bar"...it's worth looking up online and taking a look at it.  Very cool.

After that we got a cab (the only one of the day, because it was pouring rain) over to the Jameson Distillery.  This was definitely one of the best parts of the day.  It was much smaller then the Guinness Brewery, but that also made it much more personal and a lot less crowded.  The tour was very cool, for a lot of the same reasons as the Guinness tour, however we actually had a tour guide this time (Guiness was self-guided), and I thought that added a nice feel that you didn't get at Guiness.  I was also one of 8 randomly selected people in our tour group to do a blind taste test of some different types of whiskey at the end.  That definitely made it worth while, and I had a blast partaking in the taste test.  They even awarded us an "Offical Jameson Whiskey Taster" certificate at the end.  So, obviously Megan and I got some cheesy kindergarden graduation-type pictures of me with it.  It was a good time.

Dad, since I know you're reading this I thought I would tell you we also met a guy on the Jameson tour and talked to him for a while...turns out he's a 757/767 pilot for Continental.  We ended up chatting with him for about 30 minutes after the tour ended and got some cool stories and European insight from him since he flys over here a lot.  I knew you'd enjoy hearing about that. So, there ya go.

Anyway, after that we ended up walking about 3 miles looking for a pub that still served food at 8PM.  It's crazy here, the pubs only serve dinner until about 6:30, and after that they only serve alcoholic beverages.  I guess they figure whether you've eaten or not, at 6:30 it's time to drink...and only drink.  We finally just ended up going to the Bleeding Horse (same one as last night), and got some lasagna and "bangers and mash"...which is sausages over a bed of mashed potatoes with gravy on top.  If I've already told you what bangers and mash is I apoligize, but I'm not taking the time to read back through to see if I have or not. haha

Anyway, It's time for me to go to bed now.  Megan has been passed out for about an hour already, and we have a 6:30AM wake up call tomorrow morning to go to the Cliffs of Moher and other select places in West Ireland.  Once again, look up the "Cliffs of Moher"...I get the feeling tomorrow might be the most scenic day of our trip after checking them our myself.

Please forgive me if my grammar/spelling hasn't been perfect on the blog (especially this post)...I haven't had enough time to proof read most of it...which is a good thing I guess.  But, just wanted to make sure everybody knows I'm flying through most of these posts barely holding my eyes open.

Hope all is well back in Hickory/Blacksburg/Northern VA/Where ever else you folks are from!

Mind the gap,
Mark