Day 2 - Why Not Tour a Distillery on Friday the 13th?

Love love love the Raymond Chandler quote on the edge of the mezzanine! Just inside Bow Street Distillery.

We slept in, of course. Originally, the morning hours included visiting Drimnagh Castle, but we decided to save that castle in a southern suburban-ish part of the city for another day, take our time walking to the Bow Street Distillery, and see what sights we might see along the way. We grabbed a loaf of bread and some other provisions from a nearby M&S Simply Food. It was a great little store for hotel-sojourners, with a decent coffee machine and a small patisserie station. I even found ready-made roasted veggie sandwiches there. We had a lazy breakfast in our hotel room and then set off to find Bow Street. Here are some things we saw along the way.

We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Customs House, so had to get a shot of this.

A Daniel McConnell monument. Not the last one we saw while we were in Ireland.

Not sure what this building is, but it looks important!

We may have taken a longer route to get there than was absolutely necessary, probably on more narrow old cobblestone streets than we had to, but we enjoyed it. Finally, ta-da!

Our tour guide was from County Cork, where Jameson whisky is currently distilled. The facility on Bow Street in Dublin serves mainly as a museum and gift shop these days. Oh, and let's not forget, a place to taste and compare! Not to mention being entertained by a witty tour guide telling stories as you compare the smell, taste of this grain and that, one malted, one not, or peer at the side of your shot glass under the light to look for the tiny bubbles or "tears" that form when the whisky coats the inside. Also, learned that the Latin words (Sine Metu) in the Jameson crest mean "without fear," awarded to Jameson because he fought off pirates.

We finished our tour, had our end-of-tour drinks (you could have either a glass of grog or a shot of whisky), and made our gift shop purchases. Time to head back and maybe look for some lunch. :

We found this big bell right outside the distillery. Couldn't really make out where it was from, or much else, but it looked kind of familiar, maybe in the way all big bells remind of other big bells . . .

Anyway, as we got closer to the river, I got a shot of this Dublin landmark:

The Ha'penny Bridge

And I'm a sucker for those plaques or signs that provide more information, so here they are, in an order that makes sense to me:

And then some more photos taken on our walk back toward our room, just because-flowerboxes!

And a more complete photo of the Samuel Beckett Bridge:

We then visited the Trinity College Campus (but too late to get in to see the Book of Kells, arrrgh!)

Provost Salmon. You can scan a bar code on your phone, resulting in an iPhone marimba ringtone sounding and a voice, purporting to be Provost Salmon, telling you all about himself and Trinity College during his long, long tenure as Provost. In probably unrelated information, there is also an old Irish legend about a Salmon of Knowledge, and a boy (Fionn, if I remember correctly) who never had to ask anyone another question again after he'd tasted the salt from its skin while sucking on a wound that occurred as he was cooking it for the master for whom he was apprenticing. He'd always know the answer as soon as he put his thumb in his mouth.

Sphere in a Sphere

Just a lovely old tree

We felt like we'd put in another pretty good day of sightseeing and museum-visiting, so we started walking back toward the Custom House Quay and our room. Saw this on the way back, and made me think of the bank in Mary Poppins. I mean, we have pretty big bank buildings at home, but geez:

Also took a photo of the base of one of the streetlights

And then there was this eye-catching installation:

And a closer shot:

And the plaque with pertinent info:

We grabbed some more provisions at the M&S Simply Food place, took them up to our room and ate a simple supper, then opened one of our Jameson purchases and had a sip or two. Enough to make me want something crunchy and salty. Found these in the hotel lobby's "pantry."

Lovely packaging, but no discernible difference in taste from the sour cream and onion crisps/chips I've tasted at home in the U.S. Cute cow!

Went to bed looking forward to seeing our younger son, Joseph, his wife, Chelsea, and our precious Grand-Emma in the morning!