Dublin

Dublin, Ireland

What a city, where to start, its definitely like going back in time for me. I grew up in England and did the pub thing when I was 15-19 and to see all these young people in Dublin pubs its embarrassing to watch as it takes me back. The hair-do’s, the fashion, the music, the accents, the girls and guys interacting with each other, the pick up lines its highly entertaining to watch. One girl had bright pink hair immaculately done into curls with lots of eye makeup I so wanted to take a picture for the blog!

Theres an area called The Temple Bar, its full of pubs, restaurants and irish music playing, very fun! Trevs taking to enjoying Guinness, it only takes him one though and then i have to keep an eye on him, he talks to anyone. We went on a tour of the Guinness factory, apparently way back in the 1700’s the owner signed a 9000 year lease for the property the brewery is on, the longest lease ever signed to this day, talk about confidence in your product hey. The tour was really good then we went up to the 7^th floor of the brewery for our free Guinness, it tastes like an adult milkshake, the Guinness over here is really mild and creamy and quite good. The next day we toured the Jamieson distillery and Trevor got picked out of the crowd to sample 3 different whiskeys and comment on each of them, he loved that of course. Then onto the Medieval Village where we learnt all about the Vikings and the history of Dublin.

Dublin is kind of a dirty city, there are security guards standing at the doorways of the Spar stores (corner grocery stores here) and metal shades that cover the shops when they are closed so that makes me think that quite a few windows get broken here. Of course the pubs all have the bouncers outside but then so do ours too so thats normal. Remember Im not used to hanging out at pubs/bars etc. So for me its a surprise. The economy here is struggling , you wouldn’t know from the shoppers and pubs etc. but a girl in the bar told us that her rent for the last 5 years was $1300.00 euro per month but as of this year it dropped to $950.euro per month because of the economy and they expect this to last for 6 or 7 years before it recovers. The cathedrals now you have to pay to go inside some of them and then some of the smaller churches are being renovated for different things like offices and such, its quite sad to see but the government just cant afford the upkeep i guess.

We went to see Riverdance , apparently its not going to be running anymore after this month so we were glad we saw it, we cheaped out on the seats but because it wasn’t full we got into better seats, it was great music and dancing.

All in all we had great fun in Dublin even though it rained a lot.