Tall, Dark and Handsome....

The most famous beer coming out of Ireland - Guinness....what else would I be talking about?

Our weekend in Dublin was a great time - it was nice to be away and not have to be really busy with touristy stuff the whole time. The weather was nice, chilly, but clear days, so we spent alot of time walking around and exploring the city!

When we arrived on Saturday around 10am Ireland time, we went straight to the hotel and dropped our stuff off and started to explore a bit. Our hotel was located in Temple Bar which is not 1 bar, it is about 8-10 blocks filled with pubs, bars and restaurants and some shops - what a place to drop us off!

The weather wasn't fantastic, so we decided to do the Guinness Brewery Tour which was about a 20 minutes walk from our hotel. On our way, we stopped at the oldest pub in Ireland, The Brazen Head, est. 1196.... The pub was pretty interesting with low doorways and thin doors and lots of small rooms - they did have flushing toilets though, which releived me (literally, haha).
The picture here shows the bar, the stone part in the front is the original building and when you go through this, there is a large courtyard with lots of tables outside. It would be a fantastic spot in the summer!

We headed towards the brewery and Dylan was more excited than I have ever seen him. The tour was pretty interesting, I acutally learned a bit about the brewing process and why the beer is so dark. Mr. Guinness opened the Guinness Brewery at St. James Square in 1759 when he signed a 9000 year lease. The buildings were pretty old and the beer tasted delicious! We read after this that the Guinness Brewery is the biggest tourist attraction in Dublin - it was packed! If anyone ever goes, make sure you purchase your tickets for the tour online beforehand, we got to skip the lineup of at least 200 people and go in ahead of them since we had done this - you also get a discount for purchasing them online! This picture is of Dylan and I on the top floor of the brewery where you get your complimentary Guinness and a view of the city.

Once we had a taste, we decided to continue our travels on to another pub. When we left, this fella approached us and said he was going to see his buddy play at a pub with free drinks! He said "Come on, I just picked up these Germans (4 German guys waved) and we're heading over, we got room for 2 Canadians too"! Who are we to say NO? So we followed this guy (who we dubbed as Curly) and went to a pub not far away to hear his friend play. His friend, Steph, was really good and we've been trying to find him online, but can't remember what he called himself. Curly was an interesting cat too, a little odd, but nice fella in general and we had a good time!

We explored some of the city, had a bite and were in bed by 9pm on Saturday night...imagine! Our hotel was along the river in the middle of Temple Bar, we could here people until the wee hours, but we were content to sleep through that and get up early on Sunday for another full day!

Sunday was a relatively nice day so we did a walking tour of the city. We went to Trinity College, Dublin Castle, Christ Church and the middevil part of the city. We walked through the large shopping district early afternoon and along the river. The river runs through the middle of the city, along Temple Bar and there are large (for cars) and small (for pedestrians) bridges over it every block or two. This is us on Sunday morning in front of one of the bridges that has the Guinness colors.

After this tour, we decided to go to Gogarty's, a large pub and have a cold one (see picture below). At this pub, there is live Irish music from 230pm to 230am which we enjoyed all evening! We loved the music and sang along to some of the songs and had a great time. We had our own mini pub crawl and explored the pubs in Temple Bar until late that evening. Was funny, for a Sunday afternoon, all the places we visited were packed, so we weren't the only ones enjoying a few Guinness!

Monday morning, we slept in, had a bite and went back to Trinity College to see the 'Book of Kells' which is an old bible that was written (mostly in pictures) in the 6th century. We walked through the museum and around the campus. The campus was really old - built in 1592 and was the first University in Ireland.

Before we left, we had to have some Irish Stew. It is the dish of choice in Ireland made with lamb. Neither Dylan nor I like lamb, but we decided to try it anyway. It was good, but Mom's stew tastes better to me!

We left Dublin around 4pm and headed back home to Brussels. Because our tickets were so cheap with RyanAir (53 euro for the two of us), we flew to the airport in Charleroi, just outside of Brussels.
Here is a summary of our trip home:
- get bus from Dublin to the airport (45 mins)
- fly from Dublin airport to Charleroi (1h40mins)
- get bus from Charleroi Airport to Charleroi train station (20mins, after a half hour wait)
- get train from Charleroi to Brussels (1hr, but we had to wait 1h40mins for the train)
- get metro from Brussels Central to our apartment (15mins)

We arrived home at 11:45pm on Monday night after leaving Dublin at 4pm (Ireland time), for a total travel time of 7hrs. We had a fantastic time and if we're still here for St. Paddy's Day, we hope to head back that way (but hopefully get a flight from Brussels Airport)!