I'm a fan of Guinness. It's one of the many reasons I am falling in love with Ireland. The people and so far the food being the other two reasons. But this morning it was all about "the dark stuff".
We were up and out the door by 8:45. Our tour guide took us through other parts of Dublin on the way to the Guinness Brewery. Where, however, they don't actually brew any beer, but whatever.
We were the first big group in the Guinness Storehouse this morning. Which worked out perfectly because there weren't so many people getting in my way for photos. Still I had a bunch of older folks to contend with, but I work around them. Bob and weave. Bob and Weave.
The tour was fantastic. Very tourist orientated, but I learned a lot about Guinness as a brand and as a beer. The benefits provided to Guinness employees made me want to drop everything and go to work for them. The young lad doing our tour (19 yo) gets FULL paid benefits that include medical on site, three meals a day free, a "handsome" salary (though he didn't tell me what) and 21 days vacation. Oh and all the free beer you can drink. Um, where do I sign up?
The tour ends and dumps you at the Gravity Bar which gives you a 360 view of Dublin from like a 9th floor building. Very cool indeed. And a free pint of Guinness. It was pretty cool because Guinness, as you may or may not know, takes 2 minutes to pour a good pint. They had about 10 pints sitting in different stages on the bar when we got up there. It was so cool to watch it go from a creamy, milky color to a dark lush brown. Though, did you know, if you hold a Guinness up in the natural sunlight it's actually ruby red? Me neither.
Once we were done drinking there we headed to a Medieval monestary called Glenndalough. But before we got there we stopped at this little place for lunch and for some "shopping". I did the lunch part and not the shopping part. The place - who's name I'll have to look up - was also a nursery and garden. There were so many flowers there I could barely stand it. I now have photo after photo of flowers. And here's a flower. And here's a flower. And here's a flower with a bee butt sticking out.
Done with lunch we were off to Glenndalough (which means the valley of two lakes) where we got to see one of Ireland's most atmospheric monastic sites. St.Kevin built this place in the 6th century. The vikings pillaged it some 600 years after it was established. Now it's just ruins. But what makes it cool is the Round Tower of Glendalough. It's 100ft tall and is one of the best kept ruins of these round towers in Ireland. The other ruins near by date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Stunning.
The Round tower sits in the middle of this mid evil cemetery. Guess who was in 7th heaven? Ahh... this girl. I mean. The Civil War cemeteries were old. But this place...good heavens. So many headstones you could no longer read anything on...it was just amazing.
It started to rain as we were leaving and heading to Kilkenny. Which is where I sit now typing this out. We got into the hotel around 5 and had a group dinner this evening. Janet is out walking off dinner and I chose to sit and tell you all what we did today...and work on my photos.
Tomorrow we will spend the day walking around Kilkenny. Kilkenny is another medieval town built in the 13th century. There's a HUGE castle here and a HUGE cathedral we'll see tomorrow.
0 comments:
Post a Comment