Ireland Day 7: Straffan to Dublin, via Tullamore

Woke up in the castle this morning, and walked the grounds.  Beautiful morning.  After breakfast, we piled into the van and headed out for an exciting day - Tullamore Dew in the morning and the Guinness Brewery in the afternoon!  Our first stop was the town of Tullamore, located in County Offaly.  We got there a little bit early, so we walked around the small town for about half an hour.  It was a Sunday morning, and the town was quiet except for people walking to church, and the sound of church bells ringing.  It was nice.

We headed to the Tullamore Dew distillery.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Tullamore Dew - I used to drink it at the VFW in Carthage, NY when we lived there with a guy named Marty.  It was a really cool old distillery, and was founded in 1829. 

After the distillery, it was time to head to the holy grail - the Guinness Brewery.  I hate to say it but I was kind of disappointed when we got there.  Because of the laws in Ireland, you cannot tour the place where they actually make the beer.  This made me sad, because one of my favorite things about visiting breweries is the delicious smell of the malt and the barley.  Plus it was amazingly crowded.  Aside from that, it was pretty cool.  Our first order of business when we got there was to head straight away to the cafeteria to have some of what I heard was the best Guinness stew in the world.  And it was!

Next we walked around the brewery on a self-guided tour.  Lots of interesting stuff. A couple of my favorite parts were the advertising section and the locate your ancestors section.  The advertising section had all the different advertisements Guinness has created over the years, including some really cool old commercials.

In the "locate your ancestors" section, there was a computer where you could look up your family name and see if any of them worked for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin.  I did find a "Peter Penrose" who worked there - only one Penrose.  I'm now on a mission on Ancestry.com to figure out if he was a relative of mine.  Oh how I hope he was!

I also found this quote painted on a wall in that section.  I fell in love with it instantly - I think it sums up how I feel about Ireland.

Next we headed up to the Gravity Bar, located at the top of the brewery with floor to ceiling windows, hoping to get our free pint.  But it was not to be - the Gravity Bar was packed with people - you could barely move in there.  We elbowed our way up to the windows and got our first real glimpse of Dublin.  Wow!  It was way bigger than I thought it was!  You could look out at the old Guinness Brewery, which was huge.  Past that was the city.

We moved downstairs to another bar and got our free pints of Guinness, and found a few moments of relative quiet in a table in the corner by a window with a nice view.

It had been a pretty long day so far, and after the brewery, we were definitely ready to head to our hotel and have some dinner.  We arrived at the Arlington Hotel, located by the O'Connell Bridge and the River Liffey, right in the heart of Dublin.  We ate dinner a pizza place beside the hotel.

We walked to a pub called the Brazen Head - Ireland's oldest pub, dating back to 1198.  It was a really neat pub, with several different rooms, and an Irish band playing, as well as seats outside.

Next we headed across the street to O'Sheas Merchant, a pub recommended by our driver, Paddy.  A friend of his from Kerry owns the bar, and there is a painting of his uncle on the outside of the bar.  They have really good traditional Irish music every night.  On this night, when the band took a break, they let Donal perform.  It was so cool seeing Donal perform in a real Irish pub in Dublin!  He even sang Fields of Athenry (one of my favorites)!

We walked back to the hotel.  On our way back, we went to McDonald's and had an Irish double cheeseburger (my favorite late night snack).  It was similar to, but not exactly the same as, an American double cheeze.  Still delicious!!  There was a club beneath our room, and the windows opened onto the alley where all the music and people were.  It was very loud, but we were really tired, so it didn't matter.  We drifted off to sleep to the sounds of 80's American music - Guns N' Roses, Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle, and Bon Jovi.  It was awesome.