Hey Everyone,
The highly anticipated Knapp-King Reunion Part Deux, Dublin, has finally arrived. My liver has been on life support this week still trying to break down all of the Guinness, Smithwick's, and Bushmill Whiskey that I imbibed last weekend. Let me start by telling you that there is not much to do in Dublin but drink, as you will see from our experiences there. The Irish expression "Pints Aplenty" could not be more true in Dublin.
First, I need to back up quickly and provide an entertaining story that started our trip to Dublin. So, as you know, we saw Patrick and Susie off to Ireland last Tuesday morning, and Ann and I continued our work week. Ann also had to fly to Germany last Wednesday morning for some meetings and returned to London on Thursday afternoon, just before leaving for Dublin on Thursday night. We were flying Ryanair to Dublin, which if you do not know, is the low cost carrier of Europe. We have heard some ghastly stories about Ryanair, but we took our chances. It's the airline that has cheap tickets, but they charge you for everything else, including if you do not check in online, which is fine because Ann and I do that all of the time. So, we left for the airport in plenty of time with our boarding passes in hand. We even had time for a beer before heading to our gate. As we get to the gate, and the ticket agent sees our US Passports, she looks at our boarding passes and asks where our stamps are. Apparently, all non EU passport holders have to have a security stamp on their boarding passes to board the plane, and this is written in small lettering on the boarding passes. This is all happening 20 minutes before departure, and she kindly tells us that we will miss our flight. We quickly fell victim to Ryanair on our first journey. It was not very funny then, but we are now able to look back at it and laugh, but we did miss our flight, had to stay in a hotel near Gatwick airport on Thursday night, and pay about a $350 rebooking fee to catch the first flight to Dublin on Friday morning. Needless to say, if I can avoid Ryanair for the rest of my life, I will die fulfilled.
We finally met up with Patrick and Susie around lunch time on Friday at our hotel in the Smiithfield area of Dublin, just north of the River Liffey and right by the Jameson Distillery. Our first stop was at the Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin(see pic above). It was founded in 1198. We had the most amazing Cottage pie there for lunch. From there, we headed towards the Guinness Brewery. Having grown up in the backyard of AB in St. Louis, I was prepared for a mind blowing experience. Unfortunately, the tour was less than thrilling, more museum type stuff than good old beer brewing, but the highlight was having a free Guinness on the top floor "Gravity Bar," where you are treated to a 360-degree view of Dublin. Leaving the Guinness factory, we headed towards the area of town called Temple Bar and home to the Dublin Castle(stronghold for British power) and Trinity College. En route, we popped into The Bank Bar for a cocktail near Trinity, which was originally the location of the Belfast Bank in Dublin. After walking through Trinity's campus, which is majestic, we pursued a local's pub recommendation called Mulligans. A fantastic recommendation it was. After another pint there, we headed back to the hotel to regroup for the night's activities. Our first stop was back in Temple Bar at a pub called The Palace. I decided to take a break from beer and I ordered a vodka soda which prompted the bartender to call me a woman. When I said a double, he said that's a little better!!! HILARIOUS. Departing from The Palace, and after a quick photo of Ann and Susie with the dark complected leprechaun, we made our way into The Temple Bar in Temple Bar. A few pints later, we had a very unmemorable dinner, and that was not due to our level of soberness, but the quality of the restaurant that we picked. For the finale of the night, we were excited to end at a pub near our hotel called The Cobblestone, which is highly regarded for its music scene. We were there for a short bit, and then the AARP contingent of our group(everyone except me) decided it was time to call it a night(no offence to our AARP blog followers). Overall, Day 1 was a huge success.
We got a little bit of a later start on Saturday. We wandered around through some shops near O'Connell St. and then crossed over the Liffey for some lunch at Gallagher's. I had the most delectable Corn Beef and Mash ever. I would go back there in a heartbeat. After lunch, our first goal was to see what else there was to see in Dublin, but after a few minutes of discussion, it was decided that we had really seen the highlights. Therefore, let the Day 2 pub crawl commence. We made our way through an awesome area called Soda towards a beautiful victorian pub called Long Hall. From there, we toured a bit more of the Soda neighborhood and made our way out into St. Stephens Park, a beautiful green space in Dublin. It was once where all of the public hangings in Dublin took place. Heading back into Soda, we found our next stop at the Stag's Head. All of the pubs in Dublin are so incredible because they are all old victorian buildings with stained glass, beautiful chandeliers, and intricately carved wood. The Guinness was not bad either;) The next stop was this incredibly large pub called O'Neills near Trinity College. It might have been one of the biggest bars that I have ever seen. We ordered some sliders that were unfortunately disappointing. Leaving O'Neills, we made probably one of the biggest discoveries in another pub called Kehoe's. It was not so much the pub itself, but the band that we found there called "The Shirt Tail Stompers." It was a 1920's style swing band from London that was there rehearsing before a gig that night. They let us sight in on their "jam session," and wow, that was great. After a few hours there, our final pub stop was at a place called Toner's in the Georgian area of Dublin. It was an old grocer's shop turned pub. Due to Patrick and Susie's 7:30am flight on Sunday morning back to the States, we called it an early night on Saturday. I think that it is safe to say that we had a nice sampling of the pubs in Dublin.
Thanks Patrick and Susie for making the trip over. We had such an incredible time. We are already looking forward to Italy next year.
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