Europe

After the adventures of yesterday, we were hoping for an incident-free day today! We were up very early to get out of the hotel and into the Heathrow terminal to catch our rescheduled flight to Dublin. We were I the terminal so early, we even managed to get on an earlier flight, which was a bonus. So instead of departing at 9:50 am, we got onto the 7:40 am flight. We got to the gate as the flight was boarding and joined the back of the line. It seems that the Aer Lingus model for business class is to take a lot of extra money off you and then treat you like you bought the cheapest discount ticket! Still, we were thankful to just be on the flight. We pushed back on time and settled in for the hour-long flight to Dublin.

We landed in Dublin around 9:00 am. We decided to just get a taxi into town but getting a taxi was very slow process. Eventually we got into a taxi and headed to the Shelbourne Hotel. The trip to the hotel was only about 15km but the traffic was horrific. It was about 10:30 am by the time we alighted at the hotel, nearly 29 hours after leaving our hotel in Paris (with about four hours of sleep in the Heathrow airport hotel). Needless to say, we were feeling a bit precious by this point. We headed into the hotel to check-in, to find a queue of people checking out. So we just left our bags in the hotel lobby and headed for the restaurant to get some breakfast. We discovered that breakfast had already ended and the door to the restaurant was closed. Given the trip we had just endured, we were not going to be put off by such a small obstacle. So we let ourselves into the restaurant, showed ourselves to a table, and settled in. Even though breakfast was over, the staff were fantastic and took our order for a lovely breakfast.

After breakfast we checked in and headed to our room (which the hotel had graciously upgraded for us). We didn’t stay long in the room before heading out to explore Dublin. We decided to start by getting on the hop-on, hop-off bus. We did a lap of the city, which took about two hours. This was a great way to orient ourselves and work out what we’d like to explore in more detail.

We got off the bus in O’Connell Street and walked to our first stop, the Teeling Whiskey Distillery. We decided to do a tour of the distillery, with a tasting at the end. While we can’t say that we developed any real appreciation for the taste of whiskey, we did enjoy seeing how it was made. This distillery is the first new distillery to open in Dublin in 125 years and the tour was very interesting.

Continuing with the alcohol theme, our next stop was the home of Guinness beer, the St. James’s Gate Brewery, founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness. Since Dublin is quite compact we decided to walk to the brewery, rather than wait for the bus to come around again (even though it was raining quite steadily by this time).

The Guinness Brewery has an incredible tour devoted to telling the story of the company and educating people about how Guinness beer is made. We were very impressed with the entire operation. And not only did we get to drink the beer while we were there, we even learned exactly how to pour it, which meant that we sat and relaxed drinking Guinness that had just been brewed and that we had poured ourselves! It was surprisingly far more fun than we had anticipated. The tour starts on the ground floor of the building and ends up seven stories up, in the highest bar in Dublin. The bar has 360-degree views of the city, which probably looks a lot better when it is not overcast and raining!

By the time we finished at the Guinness Brewery, it was after 6:00 pm. We decided to walk back to the hotel via Temple Bar, a bustling area of cobblestone streets, pubs, live music, quirky shops, and lots of people. This area has a nice atmosphere (although we were told it gets pretty rowdy later in the evenings).

We detoured back to the hotel via Trinity College, Ireland’s most prestigious university. It was founded by Queen Elizabeth I, more than 400 years ago. We enjoyed walking through the beautiful, historic grounds.

We arrived back at the hotel at about 7:00 pm and went straight to dinner at The Saddle Room, the Shelbourne Hotel’s restaurant. The setting, staff, and food, were all fantastic.

We left dinner around 8:30 pm, content but very tired!

We have to be up early in the morning to be organised for our flight to Iceland, so it’s now time for bed!