The Guiness Factory

The next day we set of to explore explore Dublin. We left the bus on O'Connell street and started our Irish adventure with a look around Carroll's gift shop - Rupert is still amazed at the amount of tat I buy, but at least I can claim to have a magnet to remember each holiday by and we needed some oven gloves anyway!

We stopped for lunch at a pub on the side of the River Liffey. The smoking ban had already kicked in in Ireland, so we were amused to see how the different pubs had been adapted. In this one at the back of the pub there was a door which led downstairs to the toilets. The balcony had the roof removed and replaced with a fabric cover leaving room around the sides, so it wasn't actually enclosed and so technically you were smoking outside!

After sampling our first proper Irish coffees, we set off to the Guinness Factory having a wander around the temple Bar area en route. I'd read a few stories about people not being too impressed with the factory and had doubted how much you could put into a tour about Guinness, but was pleasantly surprised. It isn't a guided tour, so you're free to spend as little or much time as you please on each exhibition before finally reaching the top floor and the Guinness bar where you can collect your free pint (or soft drink if you prefer). Whilst the actual brewing process didn't really interest me, i did enjoy the marketing displays and on one of the higher floors you can leave a message on a postcard for future visitors to read about your experience.

All that walking around had made us hungry, so on the walk back to Temple Bar, we stopped off at restaurant which turned out to belong to the same chain off hotels as the one we were staying in. The menu was different, but still had a good choice and our meals were washed down with more irish coffee :-)

That night we went to Auld Dubliner to listen to some traditional Irish music. The pub looked a bit too small for a band to play in, but was listed in our guide as one of the best places for live music. The gig that night was one man with his violin who played all of the usual Irish traditional songs, including that well known Irish song, Wonderwall lol

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