There's Whisky in the Jar

Cheap flights meant a quick weekend in Dublin for Team Reid in October. 

We arrived late on Friday night, with just enough time to experience a plate of proper Irish Stew and the end of the rugby before bed.

mmm, diddly dee potatoes

On Saturday we absorbed some culture, starting with a tour of Trinity College and it's amazing library (used in Harry Potter) and a quick look at the Book of Kells - we couldn't take any photos of it, so the pic below is kindly supplied by Wikipedia, but is of a page we saw.  Just beautiful and to think, all drawn by hand by some very patient and meticulous monks...

After a bit of lunch in Temple Bar (more about that later) we went for a long walk to take in the waterfront.  On the way, we passed U2's old studio, immortalised by their fans in graffiti.  Eat that, Banksy.

An afternoon nap and another excellent meal at the same pub we'd been to the night before and we were ready to experience the Dublin nightlife that we'd heard so much about.  We made our way back to Temple Bar as we'd been advised that this was where "the magic happens".  It reminded me a lot of Courtenay Place in that it had a seemingly endless rows of bars and pubs and street performers.  Only difference was, these buskers can play.  We encountered a band called Mutefish as they were finishing up with this song.  We would have liked to hear more, but apparently it was past their bedtime.  So we headed off to re-wet our whistles in a pub with an amazing three-piece band that covered virtually anything and everything with a distinctly Irish flavour.  With the sound of a well-played penny whistle and more than a couple of G&T's/guinnesses running through our heads it was off to bed ourselves.

After a hearty breakfast the next morning, we strode off to, just let me check the spelling, Kilmainham Gaol.  Famous for being a leader in early 1900s prison design - it features one of the first examples of the "eye of god" cell arrangement I thought was just how prisons are...  The three S's were promoted here - separation, silence and supervision.  Individual cells for each inmate meant a guard could see all cells at a glance, no matter where he was standing at the time.  Also, they came up with the idea of the mugshot here, since it was too easy to have an alias but harder to hide your face, scars and tattoos etc.  Seriously fascinating. 

But as if that weren't enough, the Gaol is also famous for being the place where the participants of the ultimately doomed 1916 Easter Rising were held and then executed.  Having studied Irish history at high school, particularly the Rising, this was a real highlight, although grim. 



Hungry and a bit sober, in all senses of the word, we made our way to the Guinness factory.  Shaped like a giant pint glass, this place doesn't take itself too seriously.  But they do make good beef ribs. 

They taught us how to taste it properly from a tiny pint glass, once you'd smelled all the key ingredients and then you learned how to pour a full pint of your own. 

I liked it from the tiny pint, but something happened to the flavour when the size of the vessel was increased.  Odd.  So Kyle got to dispose of my big pint. 

And that was all we had time for, to be sure.