This was one of the days I was looking most forward to. This was "Guiness Brewery Tour Day". Hoooray!
The day dawned pretty early, and we got to have another awesome breakfast in our awesome hotel. I rather like breakfasts in the UK. There are some variations, but they seem to cater to almost everyone. There's this delicious ham/bacon and I REALLY like...to me it seemed like slices of ham, but everyone there called it bacon, so okay then =) Then, it's mostly standard breakfast fare...fruit, yogurt, toast, cereal, variety of juices, but I am a big fan of staying in hotels that have free breakfast! Yay for free breakfast!
We had to be at the Guiness place at 9, I think, which was cool, if a little early for beer drinking. The tour was very nice, but I am used to winery and small craft brewery tours, where you get to see them in action, actually crafting the beer. This was more like a museum and the actual crafting was a distant look at some copper pots in a far off building on the compound. That said, I am sure you can get the "deluxe" tour for an additional fee...In that case, my tour was just fine =) The building is cool, it has like a central column that goes all the way up like seven or eight floors, and when you get to the top, you get your pint of Guiness and get to see all of Dublin from a bird's eye view. Honestly, the top of this thing sort of reminded me of when they crash through the top of the candy factory in the original "Willie Wonka" movie and are careening around the city...
All of that said, it was cool. We went through a tasting room and I had a smidge of the dark-rich elixir of life. By the time we hoofed it up to the top, though, I was feeling thirsty and a little light-headed so I opted for a soda. I *DID* try the Guiness, just in a sampler glass rather than a full pint at like, 10am =) We got to see the history of Guiness, varying marketing campaigns throughout the ages, they even have a place where you can enter an ancestor's name and find out if they ever worked for Guiness. At the end, in the store, there was shopping that had to be done. I HAD to get my honey something that could ONLY be gotten at this particular production plant in Dublin, and with my goal accomplished, we headed back to the bus...
We drove somewhat thru the city. We passed by Leo Burdocks, which I had thought was a singular restaurant, didn't realize it was a chain. In watching a show with Bobby Flay on Ireland earlier in the year, he said some of the best fish and chips was from Leo Burdock. Sadly, there were so many other places to try, and great things to see, that I never got the chance to try them. AND, the place that had the Guiness ice cream? When I went there, they didn't have any of that flavor, which also made me sad...I did, however, have some soda bread ice cream, which was unusual, but very tasty, and went very well with the Mango I mixed with it.
We were trying to decide what to do with the free afternoon we had, and after talking it over with many of those who were also on the tour, we decided to head for Malahide Castle, which was a short train ride away. This was probably the rainiest day I remember on the whole trip, which seemed to make the entire adventure all the more festive! The train ride was lovely, and when we arrived, we were sure where we were headed, but within a couple of minutes, found the path that led to the castle. What a path it was! Windy, with a tree canopy that went overhead, but still somehow didn't seem to stop the rain from soaking the ground, it was very magickal, like the path to great adventure, a fairy glen, or a haunted castle! I am sure the castle was that!
The castle was unbelievably cool. It has this, like, automatic audio guided tour, which I thought was neat. You can read about it at the link above, but check out my pictures, too. I fell in love with a tree there, that I called "The Druid Tree". It just looked like a venerable old soul, that's seen so very much come and go through out the time it's been where it is! I also saw a bird taking a bath in the puddles in front of the castle, that was also cool. This castle, although obviously maintained for tourist purposes was REAL. It felt old world, medieval, and kinda scary. It was also charming and quaint. It's sad to learn that the last members of the family that owned the castle passed away in 1975, but from the 12th century until the 70's before that, it had been owned by the same family! THAT is impressive!
We had about half an hour before heading back on the train, so some of our group chose to go to the town near the train station from Malahide, but I decided to take the train back. I was tired by this time! I think the path to get to the castle was at least a couple of miles long! By the end of things, we were pretty soggy, too.
Dinner that night was a short walk from the hotel. I remember eating a potato cake, and I think I had stew or some sort of meat pie. It was good. My new love found in Ireland thusfar, drink-wise is Bullmer's cider. Yum! The pear was my favorite, but they also had apple. After the night before, this was an early night, we had to be up early to drive the Belfast the next day!
~Peace
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