Sligo To Dublin

Now we are making our way back to Dublin for our last two days of the trip. We had to get up a bit earlier as the bus left about 15 minutes earlier than normal. Not too bad, we always had plenty of time.

Our first stop this morning was at Carrick-On-Shannon for our river cruise. We boarded the Moon River for an hour cruise on the River Shannon, which is the longest river in Europe. We got fresh baked scones with hot tea or coffee on this cruise. It was a very peaceful cruise and very enjoyable. A nice break from being on the bus. Relaxing. Fortunatley the weather was cooperating this morning. We even had some entertainment on the cruise.

Back on the bus to Dublin. In the morning the mist was out so we were able to stop to get some great photos of the mist in the valley with the hills poking out. Almost looks like a postcard. Very pretty.

As we made our way back to Dublin we stopped off at the Guiness Store House. This was the last of our optional tours. At the end of this tour we all got a free pint of guiness and we raised a toast to Arthur Guiness, celebrating 250 years.

The store house is huge and wide open, so on the tour we had to wear these earphones while the tour guide had his microphone. The building is built shaped as what a pint of guiness looks like, dark on the bottom while getting lighter on the top. We had to hang on to our tour tickets as that would allow us to get our free pint. We learned how Guiness was first made, which actually was a mistake and how it has grown to this day. It really was very informative. We even got to sample the freshest brew of Guiness. We decided to grab a light lunch in their cafeteria before heading up to the Gravity Bar for our pint. We wanted something to eat before drinking that dark stuff.

Up to the bar we went after lunch. This is also the tallest building in Dublin, 7 stories, where we got a great view of the skyline of Dublin. The bar was very crowded. We made our way up to the bar and our tour guide was our bartender. He gave Jen a half pint of the black stuff, while Mom and I had a pint. We raised our glasses and had a toast for a wonderful trip. We also toasted to Arthur.

Before we knew it it was time to get on our bus. We made our way back down to the street, found the bus. This time we made our way to Trinity College to the Book of Kells. These are books written by monks nearly 2000 years ago. It was in the 17th century that they were moved to Trinity College. We were not allowed to take photos of the books. There were four books in all and security was pretty tight. Once we finished looking at the Book of Kells, we then went into the Old Library. It's a very long room filled with thousands of very very olds books. There are busts of some scholars and even the oldes surviving harp in Ireland. It is rumored that this harp belonged to the High King Brian Boru. Again no photos allowed. Had to buy postcards.

We made is back to the bus to get to our hotel. We didn't sign up to go to the cabaret dinner, so we decided to walk to the Temple Bar area. Jen said that it was a long walk, but according to the map I got at the hotel, it didn't look that far. It was a very far walk. We must have walked 5 mile round trip.

We did make it to Temple Bar. There were many little streets that we not on the map. While on our trek to Temple Bar we walked through Grafton Street. This is where all the street performers were. In fact there were performers all over the streets. We stopped and watched them on our walk back. We finally made it to Temple Bar. This is an area with shops, pubs and restaurants. We did find the pub Temple Bar, but on a Friday night it was so crowded and besides they didn't serve food. Instead we found a cafe called The Bad Ass Cafe. We had a very good burger here. It was right in the square where we could watch people. On the corner was a band playing and they were pretty good. We stopped and listened to them for a while.

We walked slower on our route back to the hotel. We stopped and watched the performers along the way. There was an acrobat that was pretty good. We did make it back to the hotel. Jen was too tired, but Mom and I went down to the bar for our nightcap.

We were making our way back to our room, when we were stopped by a gentleman from Donegal. He invited us to sit with him and his wife and he bought us a drink. Boy that man could talk. He was just fasincated that we were Americans. Mom and I couldn't get away. Somehow he managed to motion to the bartender for another drink. Mom and I eneded up having three drinks in total. Our saving grace was that the bar was closing down for the night. We kept telling him that we had to go because we have an early morning.

He was a funny little guy and boy could they talk. I liked him because he said I looked 30 and Mom looked 50. I think the two bottles of wine he drank had alot to do with that. He determined that Mom is of Irish descent, even though her forebears came from Scotland. Since Scotland is just across the way and it was so easy to move between Ireland and Scotland, that she is Irish. She has the look of an Irish mother. His wife even agreed.