Diggin’ Dublin

…so far, so good! After arriving in Dublin late this afternoon we got settled in our hotel in City Center, and explored the streets of the city on our way to the Guinness Storehouse. We had a 6 PM tour time, and enjoyed exploring the multiple floors to learn about the brewery process, history of Guinness, and even had the chance to “Pour the perfect pint” at the Guinness Academy. As we made our way through this massive building, we started to feel like visitors in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. When we were done learning how to pour Guinness properly, we went to the seventh floor 360°, Gravity bar. From here we could see all the main sites Dublin has to offer… St. Patrick’s tower, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Phoenix Park, Church of Saint Augustine and John, Trinity College, Christ Church Cathedral, Croke Park, etc. it was a great way to get our bearings for when we return back to Dublin later this week. As we relaxed with our pints and the panoramic view of the city, we realized that when we travel we really enjoy “rooftop” venues. As we started to discuss, we realized that we have easily found a venue with a view in nearly every city we have visited together. I guess we know what we like 🙂 

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It was fun during the tour to learn various stats about Guinness/ the history:

– 30 million bubbles are in each pint of Guinness due to Nitrogen! 

– Yeast is kept in a specialized safe, so the cultures can be grown/re-grown as needed if they were to ever be destroyed because they’re such a crucial differentiator to their brewing process.

– Over 50 million barrels are produced annually.

– The St. James location was actually signed as a 9000 year lease! 

As we wrapped up, we were famished from a busy travel morning, so decided to try dinner at a pub, Arthers, recommended by a local we met that was just about a five minute walk from Guinness. It was a crowded pub, so we decided it was a good sign and all the food passing by us on our way in the door looked outstanding. The band for the evening was getting set up as we made our way in and within a few minutes a friendly waitress secured us a table. As we ordered a pint, the band started to get lively and we both decided to order corned beef sandwiches complete with caramelized onions and delicious Guinness/brown bread. Although we were hungry, the Irish stew or shepherds pie seem to be just a bit too much for tonight (but the servings of both looked fantastic when we saw them go past our table a few times). 

We had a fun time hanging at Arthur’s, and are getting ready to wind down now for an early morning as we start our adventure Southwest! We also learned our first bit of Irish today…sláinte (cheers)! Goodnight!