Cantilevers, Croque-Monsieur and Chianti {by the bottle}: Dublin and the Countryside

Saturday I slept in (nursing the hangover) and and walked around the city taking a few random photos and visiting the James Joyce bridge designed by Calatrava (same architect who designed the Milwaukee Art Museum.) We also visited the Guinness Storehouse brewery this day... one of my favorite parts of the trip. Not only because it was a brewery, but the interior architecture was AMAZING! It was such a cool concept, well developed and made it easy to navigate through the space for the self-guided tour. The best part was the top of the brewery where we enjoyed our free beer with an awesome 360 view of the surrounding city and beyond. After we finished the tour we went to Brazen Head pub again to get some food since the other girls hadn't been to this particular pub yet. I had a beef stew, yorkshire pudding and mash... delicious homecookin'!

Sunday was an adventurous day... we took a tour bus outside of the city to the Wicklow Mountains. Our first stop was at the Powerscourt Estate which was gorgeous. We paid to go into the gardens and that was definitely worth 5euro. The views were awesome and it helped that we had incredible weather. This is what I imaged Ireland to look like... vast rolling hills and tons of greenery! I even saw some fall colors beginning to take over and that made my day. After the gardens we were taken into a cute little city that many people might recognize from the movie P.S. I Love You, Enniskerry. We had lunch at a little sandwich shop called Kennedy's of Ennisberry, where one of the staff members dog was actually featured in the film. After lunch, we were guided through more scenic sites. We visited the bridge that was also a great scene in the movie. I will have to re-watch it as soon as I get back and recall all of the landmarks that I visited :) We went to two other cool sites. One was an old monastery that was in state of ruins, but is well preserved (at least what is left of it.) There was a really cool bell tower that was incredibly tall and the interesting thing about this tower is that it only has 3 feet of foundation beneath it. They had to place the door about 15 feet above the ground with stairs leading to it so it wouldn't affect the stability. The other site we went to was Guinness Lake. It has a deep brown color that makes it look like the color of Guinness from sediment that runs off the local land and dyes it that color. They also brought sand in from the coast to make it look like the lake had frothy 'head' on one side of the lake. It actually looked like a giant source of Guinness... Wouldn't that be everyone's dream?

When the tour finished, Meaghan, Sarah and I went to a bar where they played American football. Sadly I had to watch the Packers lose. I won't let that ruin my fantastic Sunday though! Overall a great day and I have nothing bad to say about Ireland. Friendly people, beautiful scenery, lots of history... and of course great beer. I didn't make it to the Jameson tour, but I'll do that next time ;) Time for bed to rest up for Amsterdam!