In Dublin's Fair City, Where Girls are so Pretty...

That was the fastest trip ever. We aren't use to only going somewhere for 2 nights, but it was a lot of fun, we never got bored and we stayed busy...that is, if you can call drinking, keeping you busy. When in Rome right? :)

We flew business class over to Dublin so were spoiled from the start with the SAS lounge and the nice seats, food and drinks on the plane. We got in about 6:00pm and went straight to the hotel. We did something a little different on this trip than we usually do. We stayed close to the airport at the SAS Radisson on a package deal. We had 2 days of free transportation to and around Dublin, a one day pass per person on a hop on hop off bus, a free meal in their nice restaurant, free breakfasts, and a business class room. Since it was pretty last minute we decided to give it a try and it worked out great. The first night we got in and at dinner at "Potters" I had a fantastic slab of thick, juicy beef with wonderful potatoes and Michael had a huge piece of grilled salmon with vegetables. He tends to order fish in a restaurant that he thinks will have good fish since he never gets any at home. :) After that we watched some TV and went to bed.

Saturday we got up early, ate breakfast and headed into Dublin. We got on the hop on hop off bus. We have always kinda made fun of the hop on hop off buses, but it was free and we didn't have many days in Dublin so seemed like the easiest way to get from point A to point B and see lots of stuff. It wasn't so bad after all. The guide was really funny, we saw a lot of places from the bus we might not have seen, and since it was a 24 hour pass that took us to all the top tourist spots it worked out great. We got on and rode for about 30 minutes as we knew our first stop we would get off at was the Guinness Brewery. I had reserved our tickets before arriving in Dublin and I am so glad we did. It was only about 10AM but the line for the tickets was pretty long already. Since I had reserved ours we went straight to the Customer Service Desk where there was no one got our tickets and started the tour (which was self guided). This was our third brewery tour so we didn't spend much time on the beginning of the tour where you learn about how beer is made. You can only learn about it so many times before it gets kinda boring. The rest of the tour was interesting and really well done, but we rushed through the entire thing. We spend a little time in the room with the history of the advertising and about the actual Guinness Company and finally made it to the Gravity Bar to claim our free Pints of Guinness. We were both a little nervous about this as the only other time we had had Guinness we weren't fans at all. To our delight, it was heavenly! The stuff we had before was the Guinness Extra Stout and was really hard to get down. The regular Guinness Draught, was by far 10000000 times better :)

After the brewery we got back on the bus and drove around for about another 40 minutes until we got to the Jameson Distillery. We grabbed lunch at a pub before going to that tour.

This tour was great. It was a guided tour, the tour guide was funny and I was one of 6 people that she got to do a Whiskey Tasting of 5 types of whiskeys. Everyone else only got one glass. After it was all done, I got a little certificate saying I am a "Certified Whiskey Taster". Michael is a whiskey man and I'm now a certified whiskey taster so we couldn't leave without a bottle. We went for some pretty good stuff. The bottle had some "pomp" to it, because it was one of their better and rare bottles that they make. Our bottle got registered by its number in a big fancy book. So if you go here, we will tell you our bottle number and you can go see our name. It gets put in the book by a calligrapher, so it will look pretty.



From there we hopped back on the bus and got off by the river front and wondered to an area called "Temple Bar" It is a cute area of nothing but restaurants and pubs. We ate dinner at a place called "Mexico to Rome", took our classic picture we always take, walked back to the bus to take us back to the hotel and headed back up that way. We dropped all our stuff off in the room then went downstairs to the hotel pub for another smooth wonderful pint of the black stuff. Mmmm Guinness. (We are big fans now)

Our Classic Picture

Sunday we spent walking around Dublin for about 6 hours. We had thought about going to the coast to a little fishing town, but decided that we weren't sure how much time it would take so opted to head back to Dublin. We didn't really do anything but walk and walk and walk. We found Dublin to be a pretty small city as it didn't take very long to walk from here to there and back again. We stumbled upon a few cool things, had some coffee, ate some lunch and went back to the hotel to grab our stuff and head to the airport to come home.

Gulliver made of Sand

The Tart with a Cart as she is known by the Irish. AKA Miss Molly Malone

Tourist Center

Me with a Church connected to the Dublin Castle. (which really looked more like a palace or big mansion)

Michael in front of a Pub

Cool Yellow Door

Michael acting like an orangutan

A Church

In short, Dublin to me, is a city of pubs and colored doors. It was fun to have a short weekend trip for just 2 nights even if it meant sacrificing knowing the city as well as we know many others. My tip for Dublin, Don't miss the Brewery or the Distillery. They were by far the highlight of the trip!

All of our pictures are in this album below.

Dublin August 2007

This Bonny Lass is Goin' to the Motherland!

On the 15th of every month SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) puts out specials on 3 different cities that you can fly to on half as many bonus points as normal. We have been itching to get away for a quick trip but had been waiting to see what cities were on sale this month. When we checked we were delighted to see Paris, London and Dublin! It was easy to pick one of these three.

Paris: Been there, Done that! lol. just kidding. We would love to go back to Paris, or even just fly into Paris and go to some other French cities/towns, but not this time.

London: We both want to go, Michael more so then I, but it doesn't call to us as loud as many other towns.

So, Dublin it is! We are heading out in a week and a half and will only be there over a weekend, but should be plenty of time for some fun and most importantly, the Guinness Brewery! Recently a Viking Ship from Denmark set sail to Dublin and arrived just a couple days ago after a 6 weeks journey and will stay there for a few months. Perhaps we will run across that Danish Viking Ship while we are there!

Once I step foot in Ireland, I will have finally visited all the country's that make up my blood! Mexico, Germany, and Ireland! While I'm so glad I know that my family from Mexico was from Guanajuato, I still wish I had some idea where in Germany and Ireland my family came from as well.