Dublin - turn at the Guinness sign

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We've made it to Ireland! This is one of our favorite countries- it's beautiful, the people are wonderful, and of course Dublin is the home of the greatest beer ever made. We've included a few city shots, but most of our Dublin pictures will take you through the Guinness brewery. There's much more to the brewery but you'll get the gist of it. The street above is one of the many pedestrian bar and shopping areas. We also spent sone time in Temple Bar, listening to some live traditional music and watching Irish dancing. Irish bar crowds are quite rowdy and like to be included in the singing and clapping. We had a great night out. Maybe we'll take up Irish dancing for fun, although it is way more work than it looks like! But back to the beer - enjoy the Guinness "tour."


But getting to the city turned out to be more difficult than we remembered. The car rental place was out of maps and wasn't very helpful. So we called the hotel to get directions, and were told to just "drive towards the city center for 15 minutes, take a left at the Guinness sign, and then turn right after the light and park." Not kidding. Turn at the Guinness sign?! Do you know how many of those exist in Dublin? It was impossible to extract further instructions, so we drove around for awhile and actually passed the brewery itself by accident. We figured that if there was one sign of all Guinness signs, it was the front gate. This turned out to be exactly the wrong direction, but hey we got to the hotel eventually. Turns out everyone gives directions like that, but we managed just fine after we found the city center.


(This was a church we saw on the walk towards the Guinness Brewery. I can't recall the name of it, or it's signifigance, but the architecture was interesting, so we thought we'd include it.)



The Guinness Brewery is located on the now famous St James street. Arthur Guinness bought a run down brewery, so he got a good deal and was able to secure a 9000 year lease plus water rights. Guinness has been in the same location, brewing the same beer for longer than the United States has been a country (Arthur Guinness bought the brewery in 1759). The brewery was slowly refurbished and expanded to include horse stables, a cooperage for barrel-making, and storage vats. The displays in the museum begin by teaching you about the ingredients, process of brewing, and the founding of the brewery, then you can read about the development of the famous trademarks and labels.

The coolest is the harp on the label, which was based on the real harp you see below. The guy who drew the iconic ads such as "Guinness for strength" and "my goodness, my Guinness" was almost recruited to be an animator for Walt Disney, but he turned the offer down to stay with Guinness. It's pretty impressive that such a famous and widespread company is maintained on a single type of beer.

At the top of the museum tower (7 stories up), you get a free pint of Guinness. It is by far the best Guinness you will ever taste. The bitter taste of canned beer isn't there, it's smoother, and you can appreciate the roasted flavor of the barley. You can almost taste the pipes it's carried in. Has to be the perfect pint. - Anna








Below is the traditional Irish band that we saw perform in a Temple Bar pub. They were very good, they played alot of folk songs, like 'Wiskey in the Jar' (also covered by Metallica), and Tim Finnigan's Wake. Tim Finnigans wake was a funny song about a roofer who was found laying on the ground and everyone thought was dead, so they took him home and layed him out with a "Barrel of Porter at his head, and a Barrel of Whiskey at his feet". It turns out he was just drunk, and woke up halfway through his own wake. The band also played "Brown-Eyed Girl", probably one of the only times that song has been played with an accordion, it just doesn't have the same ring.

At one point, when the singer was trying to get everyone to clap along and wasn't getting much of a response, he said to the crowd "Come now, everyone join hands, and we'll try to contact the living!" That seemed to work, because after that, everyone in the pub really got into the show.
Anna also mentioned Irish dancing. The five youths who performed were very good, and had, in fact, just gotten off a plane from L.A., where they performed for President Obama. It was extremely impressive, and looked quite hard. I don't think I will ever make fun of Michael Flatley again. - Scott