Dublin

It's real

Christ Church

       A quick 40 minute flight from Manchester brought us to Dublin a few weeks ago. The first thing that hit us was the hospitality and friendliness of the people we met on the trip. From the night we arrived and the driver of our bus cranked up "Can't Buy Me Love" and sang along, to the day we left and our bartender cracked jokes and poured the perfect Guinness, everyone treated us well. On our first day we did the standard city tour, seeing the castle, Temple Bar, Christ Church, Trinity College and basically the whole city. Dublin is a sprawling place, and while the center is easy to walk around buildings tend to go out rather than up. This makes things like the towers of Christ Church or the clock tower of the castle stand out really nicely.

Certified Whisky Tasters

    After the tour we hit the Jameson whiskey distillery. There we got to tour the grounds, hear the history and see how the whisky is made. Apparently the barley used to make Jameson is not roasted directly over a fire but in kind of a giant convection oven. This doesn't give it the smokey taste that scotch has, and since its triple distilled it has a cleaner, less sweet taste than Jack Daniels. I learned all of this because I was selected to be a whiskey taster at the end of our tour. Rather than blindfold us and have us guess they just gave us three shots of different whiskeys and told us why Jameson was the best, which it really was by a long shot.
    Dublin isn't like Paris or London in that it isn't a city famous for its landmarks. The Molly Malone statue and other sights are fun to got to, but people visit Dublin for the culture. What better way to experience this than with a pub crawl? We went with the same group that took us out for a city tour and we got to visit a lot of pubs including one that brewed its own beer on site. Our tour guide warned us not to attempt to drink like the Irish because we would fail. I think we came pretty close.

Glendalough

The next day I met up with Aunt Marie and Uncle Frank for a really nice day out in the country. We went to Glendalough in County Wicklow for a walk around amazing 6th century monastic ruins and a hike around the little lake nestled in the hills. The whole place was a large monastic community started by St. Kevin in the 500's, and many years later miners moved in to the farthest edge of the lake. It was beautiful and both Marie and Frank know their stuff about the area and it was great to hear them talk about all the history and stories they have. That night we went back to their house for one of my first home cooked meals in a long time. After thoroughly stuffing my face it was time sit with some tea and talk about the family history, the economic state of Ireland and number of other things. It was a great trip, and nice relaxing cap to my weekend in Dublin.

Uncle Frank and Aunt Marie