July 28 2017
With plans to meet the others at the Barracks Museum at 11:00 we cleverly slept until 10:30, which is what being awake for 36 hours does to you, I guess. But I will say this – Jeff appears to be correct in his strategy for getting past jet lag quickly by forcing yourself to stay up until after 10 pm on your day of arrival.
As it turns out, everyone was behind schedule, so we were able to meet the Dunses and Sandovers around 11:30. The Barracks Museum (officially the Decorative Arts & History Museum) had a well stocked collection of (sometimes gruesome) war memorabilia, and used anecdotal stories of real people to illustrate Ireland’s history of involvement in wars throughout the world.
That up there is the Pint Glass building.
We walked over to St. James Gate, which now goes by the unfortunately consumerist-sounding name of the Guinness Storehouse. The “Storehouse” is a self-guided tour up 7 circular floors which lays out the process of Guinness beer-making. Apparently this 7-story tower is ingeniously shaped like a Guinness pint glass, but for some reason it’s been camouflaged behind brick walls, so I guess you just have to take their word for it.
At several points along the way, you are given the chance to trade your “free pint” ticket in for other goods and services (such as a flight on level 5). We jumped at the chance on level 6 to trade for learning how to pour the “perfect pint” when we found out we were allowed to drink the pint we poured. There was a bit of fancy footwork trying to keep Jack out of sight of the ID checkers, but at the end of the day we needn’t have worried since this is how the conversation ultimately went:
ID Checker: Could I see some ID please?
Sofia: I’m sorry, I don’t have his passport with me.
ID Checker: OK. That’s fine then. Have a nice day.
God love you, Ireland!
After a hectic bit of shopping in the actual Guinness Storefront, we walked with the Hipps over to check out St Patrick’s cathedral, which is just lovely. It’s the burial place of Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels fame (a book I have added to my must-read list).
After a rest up at the hotel, everyone met up at the Banker’s Bar for dinner and then a walk through the crazy evening streets of Temple Bar. People were everyone, lined up at all of the bars, drinking on the street, milling about. Just walking around was supremely fun. Eventually, at Kinga’s suggestion, we landed at The Hairy Lemon for our last drinks of the night, and last drink together before we head off in separate directions.
The Hairy Lemon was magnificent – huge inside but divided into little bits so it still had an intimate, small-pub feel. Just over our heads in the picture below was an Edmonton Oilers patch, so we think we might mail them a Canucks playoff towel to round out the collection a bit.
The Hairy Lemon