Dublin (I heard you guys have beer here)
After we dropped off our rental car at the airport, we picked up a great service they offer called the Freedom Ticket. The Freedom Ticket is a three day pass you can buy at the airport that provides you a direct shuttle to several neighborhoods in the city, a 48 hour hop-on hop-off bus ticket with two paths around the city, unlimited city bus service if you want to ride after the hop-on hop-off tours stop for the night, and a shuttle ride back. It was perfect for what we needed. There are some other added options like a free walking tour if you buy the Freedom Ticket, but we didn't take advantage of that.
The most fun thing we did in Dublin is an easy choice for both of us, it is the Guinness Experience. While we loved our tour of the Smithwick Brewery in Kilkenny, this Guinness tour is like nothing you have ever seen. You enter the building and look up. The inside of the building has been designed to look like one of the famous Guinness pint glasses. Each floor describes a different portion of the brewing, packaging, or marketing process, and can take several hours to complete. Along the way you have tasting rooms where they "teach" you the proper way to drink a beer. The tour is completely self-guided, but there are monitors at each stop to explain what the process is, and to keep you informed. There are some wonderful and odd items along the tour like Arthur Guinness' 9000 year lease on the factory, an actual unexploded bomb they pulled out of a Guinness freight ship during World War II, a ten foot tall carving of a pint glass with horses bursting out of the glass, and a fish on a bicycle. On the next to last floor are several Guinness themed restaurants for those looking for a meal. Once the tour is over you are given a ticket for a pint of beer from their rooftop bar that overlooks all of Dublin. If you are lucky the bartender won't take your ticket, and you will get several pints of beer on the house. That made coming down from the tour much more interesting considering it was just now lunch time. This is one of the more crowded attractions in Dublin, and attracts visitors from around the world, so get there early. Wendy and I once again became the center of a tiny Asian lady's attention and she asked in her nicest hand gestures if she could take a picture with the giant American man. As I put my arm around her, and she came up to my hip, I was reminded of our trip to Beijing where I may as well have charged admission for the line of people wanting to take a picture with the biggest human they had ever seen.
A must stop in Dublin is to visit the Book of Kells, a wonderful Dark Ages copy of the four gospels of the New Testament, created by monks some time around the 9th Century. Housed in Trinity College, located in the heart of downtown Dublin, the Book of Kells is a hot commodity on the tourist market. Again, I recommend you get there when it opens so you can have plenty of time and room before the tour buses arrive. Wendy and I walked right in and had all the time we wanted, but when we walked out the wait to get in was more than an hour long. The book itself is more of a work of art than a written text. The artistic elements that went into making this text combine the Christian symbols many of us know with the Celtic symbols the Irish people would have been comfortable with in the Dark Ages. Completed over many years, the book is even more stunning when you see the mistakes that were made, and realize how upsetting it must have been for a monk more than a thousand years ago to have to decide whether to start over or just press forward. Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures of the Book of Kells. From the book viewing room you are taken into what the college calls the Long Room. The Long Room houses the oldest books at the college. At the time of our visit they had a wonderful display about the American Revolution. Many of the texts on display were 16th and 17th Century inspirations for the Founding Fathers who were writing the Declaration of Independence.
Our final must see in Dublin is St. Patrick's Cathedral, just a short walk from the Christ Church neighborhood. Another church that costs to get in, it comes with the best guided tour we received on the entire trip, and it is a wonderful site to visit. Built on the location where St. Patrick supposedly baptized early Christian converts in the 5th Century, St. Patrick's is a 12th Century Gothic cathedral packed with monuments, tombs, and banners from Irish military history. Did you ever wander what Jonathan Swift (the guy who wrote Gulliver's Travels) looked like? Of course you didn't, but you will see since he is buried there and they have his death mask, and skull, on display. The decaying banners flying throughout the church are Irish military standards that were carried in major wars of the 18th and 19th Centuries. They will be left flying until they become so decayed they are framed like some you will see on the walls. This is a great tribute to the men who fought in those wars, showing the people of Ireland their sacrifices will be remembered for generations. You will also find an interesting door floating in the church with a hole cut out. The legend goes two warring factions were so distrustful of each other that one group locked themselves in the cathedral. The other faction said they would give them free passage if they surrendered and left the church. Since the side inside didn't want to open the door so they could shake on it, they cut a hole in the cathedral door so both kings could shake hands. Filled with monuments to knights, lords, ladies, and heroes from times past, this cathedral can stand up there with any of the cathedrals on mainland Europe. Make sure before you go you see the ancient headstones and well cap from the 5th Century present day archaeologists believe were placed there by St. Patrick himself.
I have mixed feelings about Dublin. We had an awesome time, especially walking out of our hotel at night looking for a small Irish pub to have a drink in, or finding somewhere fun to eat. One place, called O'Shea's Merchant was an old local hangout that for some reason had a stained glass window of Martin O'Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore, in a short sleeved shirt holding a guitar. Another, The Porterhouse in Temple Bar, is one of the coolest restaurants we have ever been in. With four floors of food, drink, and live music, you could stay there all night drinking their local brews (which shockingly were not Guinness). On the other hand, when Dublin is compared with other European capitals it leaves a lot to be desired. It is not big, and after two days I felt like we had seem all there was too see. Most of the museums are free, like the National Museum of Archaeology, which you should visit for a great look into Irish history, but some of the art museums were very light on content. Either way, we are glad we went, and hope that everyone who goes will have a great time exploring the largest, and most diverse, city in Ireland.
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