My day in Dublin
Like I mentioned in my Toronto post, on my way to Poland I set myself up with two 7-hour layovers. The second one was in Dublin.
Although it could be seen as a tiring choice, being in new cities is energizing, I was able to sleep on the planes, and this route saved me $ on flights (thanks Skiplagged).
Was able, again, to get a $10 round trip bus into the city and back to the airport, which is just awesome and makes me appreciate public transport.
I had a bit less time in Dublin since it took me a little bit to get in (had to store my baggage somewhere and buy a phone SIM card [— doing that in Europe is the total move $35 euro for 8GB of data everywhere in Europe and 100 international minutes]).
Either way, had some time to explore.
I went to Trinity College, which was a massive and very old university. Then, saw a few really big cathedrals and buildings.
I went to a beautiful park called Saint Stephen’s Green that had these massive beautiful trees and some animals.
Then, I went to the Jameson Distillery. Jameson is a very old brand of whiskey that my dad especially loves (I’m coming around to it, too) and I got to tour around the place, see how the whiskey was made and learn more about the entire process.
Got to try a few different whiskies and compare them at the end.
Jameson has been around since 1780 (or 1810 depending what you look at). They made it through the prohibition in the US and other shaky economic times to still be standing today. The huge length of time, by itself, is special. And they merged with a few other whiskey companies in Dublin at some point. They also triple distill their whiskey which makes it smoother and takes longer to make. In 2013, according to their Wikipedia page (sorry, didn’t want to do much research, but I’d say most likely true), they sold 56.4M bottles. Was cool to experience the place and home of such an iconic whiskey brand.
Then went back to the airport, grabbed a Guinness before my flight (had to) and made it to Poland.
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I thought the buildings, hominess and positive vibes in Dublin were superb. Was a fun place to spend time in and explore, but probably wouldn’t go back for a while. Although, if I wanted to go live somewhere and enjoy life a lot, Dublin would probably be pretty high on the list, especially if I wanted a big city.
