WEATHER: The sun is out – all day – woo hoo
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Optional Irish dinner was AWESOME
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Saying good-bye to Missouri
BUYS OF THE DAY: Pour your own pint at the Guinness Brewery
WORD OF THE DAY: - See you on Facebook
Day song – Galway Girl (song from PS I Love You)
Wake-up song – Joker and the Thief – Wolfmother
Well I am feeling a lot better this morning. I’m going home with no regrets and I have picked myself up and dusted myself off and ready to enjoy the last day of my Irish tour.
We left Kilkenny at 8.30am for our 2 hour drive back to Dublin. We headed straight to the Guinness Brewery and I have to say I have done a few beers tours, Boags in Tasmania and Carlsberg in Copenhagen to name 2, and I have to say the Guinness experience was pretty awesome! There was so much information not just about the making of the famous beer, but the advertising, international statistics and the opportunity to pour your own ‘perfect pint’. As you enter the brewery you are standing at the bottom of the world's largest pint glass, which rises up through the center of the seven story building. If full, the giant pint glass atrium would hold 14.3 million pints of GUINNESS. At the bottom of the glass you can see the 9000 year lease that the founder Arthur Guinness signed on the St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin - the lease marks the beginning of the GUINNESS story.
Pouring the ‘perfect pint’ has to be the highlight of the tour and you get a certificate at the end to say that I crafted the perfect pint. You then get to drink your pour. This is the first time I have had Guinness on the trip. Not to say I haven’t been drinking Irish beer, I have been having Smithwicks (pronounced Smitticks – go figure) but I have to say, if I had more time I reckon I could have finished it. The Guinness is obviously the freshest at the brewery itself, and it does taste different if ordered off site. The reason behind this is that Guinness needs to be served at 6C – even if it is off by 1-2C this affects the taste of the beer. Who would have thought! So Guinness does taste the best straight from the source in this case.
We then got dropped off at Trinity College to have some free time in Dublin. The hotel check-in was for 2pm and we could collect our bags from the bus at 4.30pm. As I had been in Dublin last week, I didn’t need to run around as much, so I decided to get some chores done today. My hair was getting to the point of getting a cut. I could have left it for another few weeks, but my Spanish is nonexistent, so trying to explain what I wanted done in Spain and then I have no spare time in Greece and then I am sure Morocco would be just as difficult as Spain, Dublin was the obvious choice. So I took a walk down to St Stephens Green and stopped into the shopping center, picked a hairdresser, and hoped for the best. She was really nice and thinned it out heaps. It cost me 40EUR for a wash, cut and blow dry, which I was really happy with and I now feel like a new woman!! Thank god I didn’t get a mullet!!!
After a casual walk back to the hotel via St Stephens Green, Trinity College, Temple Bar area and the Liffey River it was just great to see this city with some sun in the sky!
We had our optional Irish dinner that we paid 47EUR for tonight. Generally the optional dinners on Contiki, are really good value, and this one was no different. We got driven to a large pub where they had a live 4 piece Irish band playing tunes and they encouraged us to participate in the singing of pretty much all the songs. They were just AWESOME, and they also played Galway Girl – our day song and it was even more AWESOME to hear it live. I finally got to spend some time with my American friends from Missouri and Ohio and we had an AWESOME night. Are you getting the drift that we had a good night? They had Irish dancers that came out as well and they, yep, were super AWESOME. It really was a good night, and after here we were dropped back into Dublin to spend our last night drinking Irish beer in Ireland. This is also where we started saying our good-byes. The Contiki bus heads back to London tomorrow morning at 7am – SUCKERS….. So people started heading home in dribs and drabs.
There were a small handful of us that stayed until 3am, and with a Macca’s stop on the way back to the hotel, there were about 6 of those people that had to be on the bus at 7am – that is hard core! Me, I get to sleep in till…… well whenever I wake up. I only have to make a trip to the post office tomorrow to send home a package with all my Guinness, Jameson and magnet purchases through Ireland, and I am meeting up with Jaime and Scott for dinner tonight at 7pm, but otherwise I am free as a bird and I do have to get my bag all re-packed again for airline travel tomorrow. Damn airline packing.
So another tour done and dusted. I will miss my American friends and I have teed up some visiting in Kansas City and Cincinnati for next year. We had a blast, and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard when we were all together. Key words like drop bear, fu#kwit, 3rd leg, and pussy water to name a few, made for some very HILARIOUS jokes and still brings a smile to my face now!!! Gonna miss you guys xx
CONTIKI IRELAND 2011 – in no particular order………
Riana – Australia
Victoria – Australia
Little Dave – Australia
Kerri – Australia
Bianca and Cameron – Australia
Alyson – USA
Henry – USA
Sara and Russ
Sam and Kaia – USA
Jordan – USA
Jeffrey – Canada
Sherrel and Amanda – Australia
Jamie and Scott – USA
Molly and Amy – USA
Michelle – Australia
Erin – USA
Kylie – Australia
Ally – Australia
Adele
Rachel – Australia
Melissa
Bec – Australia
Trinity – USA
Jessica – Australia
Nick
Ian – Australia
Erin
Sylvia – Australia
Anita
Lauren – USA
Stu – UK
Kylie – USA
Chris – Australia
Adam – Australia
Katlyn – USA
BJ – USA
Laura – Argentina
Ashleigh
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