Goodbye Dublin, Hello Kilkenny

We began our day early. About 9:30 am Ireland time, which means we're pretty much over our jet lag—hooray! We grabbed a "light breakfast" and "sweet cakes" which are not metaphors for a fruit cup and your sister.

Apparently light breakfast comprises a rasher of bacon, a sausage link, an egg, and toast and is part of a standard English breakfast and sweet cakes are something like thin pancakes (thick crepes?) covered in sugar and whipped cream. I'll leave you to guess who got which ("no thank you, Turkish, I'm sweet enough").

PassePartout had organized a tour of the Guinness brewery and we headed over there after breakfast.

The tour was pretty amazing, running our hands through a huge mass of barley, seeing a massive waterfall a-la Willy Wonka.

If they actually used the water to brew the beer, I would have seriously expected oompa loompas. We got to learn how to taste the beer from the self-guided tour, and then we got to do the tasting. It was interesting to be surrounded by beer propaganda while tasting the beer...

I think it tasted better than usual? Perhaps it was just drinking beer before 12 pm reminding me of happy college days.

The 7 floors of tour led us around through the various historical bits of Guinness, learning that at their peak, they created and filled 1000 barrels a day. We got to watch a video of a man carving wood and sculpting it into a barrel.

Imagining so many people carving and producing barrels at that pace was staggering.

Finally, we opted to pass up learning to pour our own pint to go to the top of the brewery and drink a freshly poured pint overlooking all of Dublin.

It may very well have been the highest building in all of Dublin, or if not, it's darned close. The whole room was ringed in glass and the day was gorgeous, giving us a view of the whole city for miles and miles, all the way to the dark green hills (that shadowy place beyond the East border. Mufasa says we can't go there). We couldn't have asked for a better day to go.

Eli had forgotten her favorite ring at home, so we got something a little different to remember the trip by. She picked out a beautiful golden ring that fits her thumb perfectly in a little shop near Grafton st, so we stopped by and picked it up.

Afterward, we went to say hi to Miss Molly Malone and her enormous... cart wheels.

Or, as Eli would sing to me,

"In Dublin's Fair City

Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone"

We stopped by the place we had lunch yesterday, picked up a pair of lost gloves, and then grabbed a quick lunch at Burger King. Not a whole lot of excitement there, let me tell you, though, the Whoppers are bigger in Ireland—much like they used to be in the US before people realized you could charge the same amount for less and then charge more for the same. Repeat this process for more profit.

We were still a ways from home so we decided to grab a double decker bus back to the place we were staying. We felt a little Harry Potter-esque riding on it, but I don't think anyone noticed.

Once we got home, we headed out to the car rental place and that's where the fun began.

What did we learn today? One: Rent your car in Ireland ahead of time. We had heard the bit of wisdom to rent once we'd arrived, but our plans coincided with a wave of tourists who all rented on Friday afternoon, same as us. My usual rental company, Enterprise, was completely booked, as were the 3 adjacent agencies. When we finally got back to the airport to try to rent from another company, we found that the people who work for Budget rentals are wankers. I understand that gouging me for money is part of the deal, but come on, do you really have to be so blatant about it? We paid 25 euros more to deal with Avis and got a nicer car out of the deal.

Passepartout got her taste of driving on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car, in the rain, at dusk, with a stick shift on the wrong side, during rush hour on a Friday. I have faith that she can now drive anything anywhere. The car's an Opel Insignia (opel autocorrects to "pork") pretty comfy, the drive is smooth, and we're just hoping that it does better than the initially quoted 6.6km/l (15 mpg).

After driving around about 15 roundabounts (some of them more than once, and one of them more than 3 times), we finally made it to Kilkenny, found our place, and then... couldn't find a buzzer, a key, a phone, or a person to ask how to get in. So, rather than sleep in the car, we headed to the local pub, asked to borrow the phone, called the matronly innkeeper, and got let in through the large wooden gate and down a very nature-ridden path to a tiny cottage. After a quick respite, we heded back to said pub for a pint, and to use their free wifi, from which we now post to you, dear readers. Until tomorrow.