Oh man am I overdue on writing this one. I had fully intended to write this on the plane ride home, but Air France’s seats are too small for even my Macbook Air, so here goes. After driving all over Ireland we ended up back in Dublin. Our hotel was the lovely Ashbourne Marriott outside of Dublin, which fortunately had a convenient bus running to central Dublin ever half hour or so. I had zero desire to try and find parking inside Dublin after having logged 1200+ KM over the previous 5 days.
So day 6 started off by making our way into Dublin, seeing some of central Dublin and walking around a lot. I had one thing I really really wanted to do on day one, and that was to visit the legendary Guinness Storehouse (headquarters/factory). This is the mecca of Irish beer drinking. Or so I thought. I had expected to walk around with taps every 8 feet and be drunk as a skunk after 15 minutes. I expected it to be to beer as willy wonka’s factory was to candy. Unfortunately despite the good folks from diageo (yeah thats right, THEY own Guinness too!) surely wanting to make the Guinness Storehouse an ode to drunken debauchery, they had to make it “educational” and “family friendly,” so it can never be as awesome as I had hoped. Now don’t get me wrong, I found it quite interesting the way you have to properly pour a pint (they only give you the one), or the sampling of the various brews (they come in thimbles practically), but they could have very easily provided more than 1 brew a piece.
One thing you’ll undoubtedly notice while in Dublin, there are no real skyscrapers. I think the skybar at the Guinness Storehouse is one of the tallest buildings in the city at 7 stories high.
So after leaving the Guinness Storehouse unbelievably sober, and completely devoid of any kind of buzz. We were famished. So we ended up stumbling upon this place called Gruel. The name sounds unappetizing, but the food was PHENOMENAL. The place is akin to what you’d get if a hipster who married a hippie produced an offspring who studied cooking at the cordon bleu. Decidedly minimalistic/unassuming decor, but you don’t go here for the ambience. You go here to eat the best bangers & mash I have ever consumed.
Other things we managed to accomplish on day 6: Visited a few art galleries, and some random churches, and had some more beer at a pub.
