Friday, March 20th, we started with a good breakfast in the hotel, because we knew our first activity would be the tour of Guinness!

I didn’t know much about beer of any type, let alone Guinness, but the tour tickets were pretty much sold out so we had a late morning arrival appointment and none of us were prepared to test Guinness on an empty stomach.

So, Guinness uses simple ingredients: barley, hops, yeast and water. Two facts we learned today: 1) malt is just sprouted barley and 2) orzo is the Italian word for barley. (I thought orzo was just a sort-of-strange type of Italian pasta!)

There was an interesting set of displays regarding Guiness’ advertising.

One of my favorites was the Fish on a Bicycle:

After the tour, we stopped in at the Gravity Bar which is at the top of the building and provides a panoramic view. A free pint was included in the price of the tour, so we checked it out… Jay had their new product — Guiness 00

After our tasting, we shopped on Grafton Street with lots of high-end shops, cafes, musicians and a few bucksters. By dinner time, we were pretty tired, so we had dinner at Kennedys, basically across the street from our hotel.

What were we thinking? It was a sports bar — on a Saturday night with a championship rugby game playing! The local team was wearing blue and the French were wearing yellow. Both teams had vocal supporters in the restaurant. I don’t understand the game, but the French won. And the food was delicious.

The next post will review our last day with Ylenia. She’ll fly home so she can return to work on Monday, and Jay and I will join up with our Best of Ireland Tauck tour.