Dublin

We only spent one full day in Dublin this time but after our road trip around Ireland we are coming back to Dublin for a couple of days. We flew in from London and arrived at about 1pm we spent our first day going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity college and then walking around the town.

 The next day we went to the Guinness factory (which i think is the real reason Ewen wanted to come to Ireland in the first place). The factory was really good and a lot more interesting than i thought it was going to be. It was more of a gallery/museum than a factory, you didn't actually get to see the machinery going and the bottles been filled etc it consisted more of different displays. their were about four floors of displays, they had a room full of barley, it was basically a room sized sandpit full of barley that you could touch and pick up if you wanted to. Then they had a couple of short movies you could watch, a display of the lease that Arthur Guinness signed for use of the brewery. Ewen tried a Guinness muffin but he wasn't very impressed, i suppose Guinness should stick with what they're good at. My favourite display was of all of the advertising posters and merchandise and the adds you could watch dating back from the 1950s. They had posters dating back even earlier than this, the best poster was of a lobster that was holding a pint of Guinness and the slogan read 'Lobsters love Guinness'. In one of the bars Ewen learnt how to pour his own pint and got a certificate stating he had mastered the art of pouring the perfect Guinness pint.

 We had lunch in the Guinness restaurant (they serve you Guinness bread) and then headed upstairs to the Gravity Bar where you get a free pint and can enjoy 360 degree views of the city of Dublin. By the time we got up there it was pretty packed and quite overcast outside but we still got some nice photos. It ended up taking us pretty much all day to do the Guinness factory so by the time we left it was nearly dark. We walked back to our hostel through the city centre and had a relaxing night watching movies and eating pizza.