James' in the UK

I had been to Dublin twice before without actually visiting it - both times just flying into the airport and leaving straight away. Our friend Wombat (MC at our wedding) was visiting the UK so we decided to spend a weekend in Dublin with him, which was really just a thinly veiled excuse for a drinking weekend.

Adrian and Wombat flew from East Midlands earlier in the day, and I flew from Luton after work. By the time I got their they had already scoped out the local pubs, experienced quite a few of them and were back in the hotel ready to call it a night.

Dublin at Night

Saturday morning we started with a bit of a walking tour of Dublin, which to start with was a tour for me as the others had already explored the day before. Eventually we wantered further and further around the city, finding some souveneir shops, Trinity College, St Stephens Green, Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral and a few other spots along the way but we knew that these were really all just a lead up to the main event - the Guinness factory.

St Stephens Green

Adrian and Wombat

It seemed as though going to the Guinness factory was not only the main event in Wombats day, it was a defining moment in his life and the realisation of a dream for him. The walk through the factory (not the real factory but the museum type displays) was pretty good, and at the end we went to the gravity bar to have a pint of guinness. The gravity bar was very cool, kind of hanging out over the edge of a building so it was a bit like floating above Dublin, it has floor to ceiling glass around most of the bar and provides a fantastic view over the city. We managed to snaffle ourselves some seats and sat and enjoyed the view while Wombat sat there beside himself with joy.

Guinness Factory

River Liffey

Once we'd lapped up our Guinness experience and finished up where all good tours should finish - the gift shop - we headed back into the Temple Bar area to find....well....more Guiness!. We found a pub that was selling the stuff - which to be fair wasn't that hard in Temple Bar - and settled in for a few drinks. There was a band pretending to have a bit of a trad session in the corner that we sat in and listened to. They were pretty good and made the evening most enjoyable. What made the night less cool was the groups of middle aged English (and even worse, Brummie) women hunting in packs for some young men. Actually come to think of it they probably provided as much entertainment as the band did - especially when the most horrid one started chatting up Wombat.

After seeing what we were going to see in Temple Bar we decided that we desperately needed a curry. So we hailed a taxi and gave him the instruction of finding us a curry house near our hotel. He managed to do all right and found us a classly looking indian restaurant which was almost deserted except for us. I'm not sure if we were in a fit state to be eating in a classy restaurant but they seemed to serve us anyway. We all downed curries and hideously expensive beers and headed to the pub across the road from the hotel. By this stage I was getting ready to hit the hay so it wasn't long before we left Wombat in the bar and went to bed.

Whilst in the Indian restaurant Wombat had some how managed to organise to go on a bus tour to Belfast the next day. So very bright and early he went off to catch the bus and we got to have a lazy morning. We walked into town to find some breakfast then headed out towards Dublin Zoo which all up turned out to be a pretty damn long walk. The zoo was pretty cool, especially all the monkey 'islands' with the night enclosures you could see right in to. We saw a baby elephant who was pretty cute and had a very close encounter with a gorilla. The gorilla had just been given some food which was sitting along the shelf right infront of glass window, and he sat down right in front of us, leaned up against the glass and looked us straight in the eye. It was very cool.

Dublin Zoo

After the zoo we caught a tram into town, sat down and had a coffee, then headed back to the hotel. For tea we headed to the 'usual' - the pub across the road - and had a meal of roast lamb. Wombat came back from his tour which he quite enjoyed and we sat and had a couple drinks. I had to leave very early Monday morning to catch a flight back and go to work, but Adrian and Wombat stayed until the afternoon, doing more souveneir shopping and a tour of Croke Park.

Food of choice in Dublin: Guinness! Yes it is a meal in itself!