First thing we did, after checking into our hostel, was go to the Guinness factory [because Guinness is brewed in Dublin]. So we hiked over to St. James Gate, where the brewery is located, almost dying a couple of times because the traffic comes from the opposite way in the UK. Ooooppppsss! They literally had painted signs on the street that said look left and look right [on the appropriate side of the roads], they helped a little. . It was a self guided tour and very educational. Arthur Guinness [the first 'master brewer'/creator] signed an original lease of 9000 years for the Guinness factory at St. James' Gate. Here it is.
Me playing in the Barley!
We learned about the four main ingredients in Guinness [barley, hops, yeast, and water] ,we saw how it was mainly made, the history of Guinness, advertising strategies, how its changed over time, transportation, fun facts, and then we headed up to the 7th floor, also known as ‘The Gravity Bar’ where you can enjoy your free pint of Guinness and enjoy and amazing view of Dublin.
My perfect pint [in the spirit of being in Dublin]
The view of Dublin and St. James Gate
We sat there enjoying the view and our pint for a little over an hour then we got gifts and it was off to something new. We were all hungry so we found a grocery store, bought bread, meat, cheese, chips and a few other snacks and decided to have a picnic. We ended up having our picnic at the St. Patrick Cathedral.
It was so beautiful. I’ve never seen such green grass and there were hundreds of flowers [mainly tulips] in little gardens they had.
There were quite a few people enjoying the park like we were. It was fun. We fed our left over bread to the pigeons [it was quite entertaining. Haha] Then we headed back to our hostel. On the way we encountered some swans in the River Liffey and we had some bread pieces left so we threw them out to the swans. [again, very entertaining]
us girls feeding the swans. =)
We knew that a few girls from ACT, school in Greece, were going to be in Dublin so we made plans to meet up with them at the Brazen Head which happens to be the oldest pub in Dublin. There was live Irish music and a lot of locals here, it was a nice atmosphere.
Day 2. We went on a free walking tour around Dublin. Our Irish tour guides name was Barry and he was also a college student but he knew so much and he was pretty funny.
This is Barry.
We saw many things: the Dublin Castel, The Coach House, area that used to be inhabited by the Vikings, The River Liffey, different monuments and statues, and Trinity College.
This is the grass infront of the Coach House [where they used to keep the horses and coaches for the castle] and this lawn also double as as 'heli' pad.
This is a picture of the castle. The part that looks like a castel [kind of near the middle] is the only origional part of the castle the rest was burnt in a fire. The rest of the castle was recontructed. The little blue and yellow that you see is also part of the castle. The architect painted parts of the castle blue, yellow, green and red because they liked the color [no joke].
It was a good sight-seeing day because it was sunny BOTH days were in Dublin [sunshine for the UK is very rare]. We got some of our laundry done after this, then went shopping for souvenirs. Then we had to get everything packed, now this was a challenge. We all ended up having to wear a lot of our clothes. Haha. Britney was wearing somewhere around 17 layers of shirts and I think I had about 12, all for the sake of making everything fit into our bag for the weight limit that we had, but we handled it. This pretty much concluded our time in Dublin. It was a very fun city and I would LOVE to go back! But off to London we went!
Me playing in the Barley!
We learned about the four main ingredients in Guinness [barley, hops, yeast, and water] ,we saw how it was mainly made, the history of Guinness, advertising strategies, how its changed over time, transportation, fun facts, and then we headed up to the 7th floor, also known as ‘The Gravity Bar’ where you can enjoy your free pint of Guinness and enjoy and amazing view of Dublin.
My perfect pint [in the spirit of being in Dublin]
The view of Dublin and St. James Gate
We sat there enjoying the view and our pint for a little over an hour then we got gifts and it was off to something new. We were all hungry so we found a grocery store, bought bread, meat, cheese, chips and a few other snacks and decided to have a picnic. We ended up having our picnic at the St. Patrick Cathedral.
It was so beautiful. I’ve never seen such green grass and there were hundreds of flowers [mainly tulips] in little gardens they had.
There were quite a few people enjoying the park like we were. It was fun. We fed our left over bread to the pigeons [it was quite entertaining. Haha] Then we headed back to our hostel. On the way we encountered some swans in the River Liffey and we had some bread pieces left so we threw them out to the swans. [again, very entertaining]
us girls feeding the swans. =)We knew that a few girls from ACT, school in Greece, were going to be in Dublin so we made plans to meet up with them at the Brazen Head which happens to be the oldest pub in Dublin. There was live Irish music and a lot of locals here, it was a nice atmosphere.
Day 2. We went on a free walking tour around Dublin. Our Irish tour guides name was Barry and he was also a college student but he knew so much and he was pretty funny.
This is Barry.We saw many things: the Dublin Castel, The Coach House, area that used to be inhabited by the Vikings, The River Liffey, different monuments and statues, and Trinity College.
This is the grass infront of the Coach House [where they used to keep the horses and coaches for the castle] and this lawn also double as as 'heli' pad.
This is a picture of the castle. The part that looks like a castel [kind of near the middle] is the only origional part of the castle the rest was burnt in a fire. The rest of the castle was recontructed. The little blue and yellow that you see is also part of the castle. The architect painted parts of the castle blue, yellow, green and red because they liked the color [no joke].It was a good sight-seeing day because it was sunny BOTH days were in Dublin [sunshine for the UK is very rare]. We got some of our laundry done after this, then went shopping for souvenirs. Then we had to get everything packed, now this was a challenge. We all ended up having to wear a lot of our clothes. Haha. Britney was wearing somewhere around 17 layers of shirts and I think I had about 12, all for the sake of making everything fit into our bag for the weight limit that we had, but we handled it. This pretty much concluded our time in Dublin. It was a very fun city and I would LOVE to go back! But off to London we went!
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