Dublin Saturday
Given the 2 hours of sleep the night before, miles of walking, and working-day-length pub crawl, it’s probably not surprising that we slept in a bit Saturday. After finally getting around to moving, we ate a take-away lunch on a hedge outside a cafe in Dublin’s main shopping district because we were too cheap to pay the extra 2 euro to eat in. Fun fact: European restaurants seem to all have a surcharge for dining in. I do not like this at all.
After lunch, we checked out the Old Jameson Distillery, where Ireland’s most popular whiskey was made for a long time. I now know the differences between Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey, the ingredients and steps in whiskey making, and that if you succeed in life as a barley-guarding/mouse-killing cat, you get memorialised like this:
That is a badass stuffed cat. The tour ended with a complimentary Jameson sample, which I had as a whiskey and cranberry, the way the Irish like it, they told us. We did some more exploring afterwards but didn’t really find anything all that exciting, and headed for dinner at a cheap Chinese restaurant near our hostel that offered a 4-course meal for 10 euro. Little did we know this would take 2 hours because of almost absurdly slow service. Afterwards, we headed out on another slightly less ambitious pub crawl, returning to our favourite spots from the night before and checking out a few more pubs. My favourite of these was the Duke, which had some sort of literary connection we couldn’t discern, but was still really cool. I stole 2 of their coasters to bring home.
Ireland has some excellent pubs.
