Ireland in 6 Days: Dublin, part 2

December 22, 2012:
The ride back to Dublin the next morning was punctuated by Gabe's live renditions of songs he wrote. Without wanting to infringe on his copyrights (if he has them), I'll just tell you, Dear Reader, that they were of questionable taste and ridiculously funny.

The last stop on our tour was the Guinness factory. It went into detail about how the beer is actually made and what sort of special efforts they put in to make it taste the way it does. We did a quick taste tester and it was strange how, after having done that part of the tour, you could actually taste the individual parts that they had talked about. Probably psychological, but still cool.

There was a section on advertising through the years which were entertaining and interesting. It reminded me of the kind of epic advertising they do for Molson Canadian:

The tour finished with each of us getting a free drink from the bar at the top of the factory (which is in the shape of a pint of Guiness)... non-alcoholic for me, because it turns out alcohol does not cure sore throats. We had a beautiful view of the city from this vantage point.

After 6 days in a bus, we were ready to break apart from the tour group and to check back into Barnacles hostel. We were checked into the same room with the exact same beds as the first time!

We had an Italian dinner with Liz, Tim and Mel which was a nice break from all of the pub food we'd been having at The Italian Connection (95 Talbot St). I highly recommend this restaurant. It was amazing food. We had a teary separation from the remaining members of the Ace Gang. And at ha'passhhht (another Gabe-ism) we tucked in to bed and prepared for the long journey we still had ahead of us.