Pippen: “What’s that?” Merry: “This my friend, is a pint. Pippen: “They come in pints!? …I’m getting one.”

 EUSA gave us tickets for a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of Dublin that’s good for 2 days, so we decided to go Thursday. We took pictures outside of a few places that we felt we could easily reach later, like the Dublin Castle and the really old Church because they’re in the middle of the city near many of our internships. 

some of the buildings

plan of Dublin Castle

one of the courts

outside part of Dublin castle

We went into the courtyard of the Church and asked some Irish people to take our photo. Then, they asked to interview us about our opinion of the game that night. That was pretty funny – not something we were intending to do. After that, we took the full tour of the Guinness factory.

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Apparently the Guinnesses built nice apartments for the Irish slumdwellers so they wouldn’t have to be in the slums à the saying is that the Guinnesses were good to the Irish people and the Irish people were very, very good to the Guinnesses. They’ve moved the actual production factory to different place, but the old one is now open for tours. The center is the world’s largest pint. Also, Arthur Guinness signed a lease for 9000 years for the land of this factory, so basically Guinness is going to stay there for a while.

the famous lease

layout of the Guinness factory = world's largest pint

The tour teaches you about the different ingredients of Guinness: water, hops, barley and yeast.

Kelsey and I under the waterfall of fresh water from the springs outside of Dublin

Then, you could redeem your ticket for a free pint. We decided to redeem by going through the workshop where you could learn to pour the ‘perfect’ pint of Guinness (the boys got a free extra pint from me). It takes exactly 119.5 seconds to prepare a pint of Guinness because you have to sit and wait while it settles before you top it off. It’s kind of cool to watch because the color changes in this wave from dusty red to near black.

Waiting while the Guinness changes - you can see the waves as it turns black

I poured a perfect, and very 'proud' (i.e. nearly brimming over) glass

There was also the gravity bar, this awesome circular room on the 7^th floor where you can see the whole city. It was pretty cool.

Part of the skyline of Dublin

Afterwards, one of the girl’s internship was hosting cheap burgers at a pub for the game and the money was going to charity. We all wanted to watch the Ireland-Spain soccer match so we went. It’s really kind of funny to see everyone glued to the tv, packed into this pub. Unfortunately, the game didn’t go well (4-0, Spain kicked Ireland’s butt). Even the Irish conceded: after the 2^nd goal, they started singing Ole, Ole Ole Ole – we just sat and laughed. Oh well, better luck next time (Spain is the previous world champions so they get a pass, though Spain was running circles around them – it was sad to watch).

what, what?? Guitar, Mandolin, Banjo and Violin strings in a vending machine?!?!