Lucky McBride

Part 3

The girls didn't want to spend the entire week in London since this was Bernice and Melissa's first trip to Europe and Margaret has been to London before. We discussed several other places to visit that wouldn't require too much travel time such as Paris, Brugge, and Brussels, but we wanted to pick a spot that would be new for all us. In the end we settled on Ireland since it's cheap to get from London to Dublin, Ireland and it would be a new experience for everyone. In addition, Bernice works for Diageo which owns several beer and spirit producers in Ireland. We are always taken care of when we visit any of the Diageo brands with Bernice, but no of us expected the VIP treatment that we received in Ireland. Big thanks to Bernice for setting up all the visits and for sharing the privilege with us! She really went above and beyond to get us some once in a lifetime experiences.

We arrived in Dublin midday and decided to take it easy on our first day since we'd had some late nights in London and we had an early morning planned the next day. After checking-in to the hotel we headed to the Grafton Street area of Dublin for lunch. For our first tourist activity we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The book contains richly decorated copies of the 4 gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John written around 800 AD. The book was given to Trinity College for safekeeping and is visited by nearly 500,00 people every year. The end of our tour took us through the Long Room in the Old Library Building. The Long Room is 65 meters long and contains over 200,000 texts with some dating back to the 17th and 18th century. You can see some of the photos that we weren't supposed to take. The room was built using Irish oak which then depleted all of the surrounding forests. Some of the trees are just starting to grow back now. After some shopping and a light dinner we called it a day.

The next morning we got up early to start on our 3 drive to County Antrim, Northern Ireland, which is located slightly above Belfast. Since I was the only one who could drive on the wrong side of the road, I got the task of chauffeuring the group for the day. The drive took us through some beautiful Irish countryside will green rolling hills, rivers, sheep grazing on hillsides. After a bit over 3 hours we reached our first Diageo destination, the old Bushmills Irish Whiskey distillery. Bushmills is celebrating its 400th birthday this year which makes it the oldest whiskey distillery in the world. Our private tour guide, Sam, took us through the entire process of making Bushmills whiskey, from barley and water all the way through packing and shipping the boxes. At the end of our tour we walked by the restaurant and bar area and expected that we would sit down for a whiskey tasting. Our guide took us right past this area and through the gift shop so we were disappointed at missing out on the tasting. Then he opened another door to a cozy red room with leather sofas and table full of whiskey glasses. Sam sat us down and took us through all of the Bushmills whiskeys: White Bush, Black Bush, 10 year single malt, 16 year single malt, 12 year single malt, and 21 year single malt. We also had a couple glasses of Scotch so that we could taste the difference. Of course since I was driving I only had a sip of each. After the tour and lunch I was keen to head back to Dublin since the weatherman had forecasted winds up to 70mph and snow for Northern Ireland but the people at Bushmills convinced us that we had to go to the Giants Causeway since we'd already made the long journey and it was only 2 miles away.

We had discussed going there earlier but decided to skip it due to the weather but now we figured we had to go. Although it was freezing cold and we were all nearly blown away by the winds, we were glad that we stopped by since it was the type of coastal scenery that just shows you the amazing force of nature. Nothing like that could ever be devised by human hands. Giants Causeway is referred to as the 8th wonder of the world being formed over 60 million years ago by lava outflows. There are nearly 40,000 basalt columns that just seem to jut out from the ground daring the waves to break them. As the waves came up, the sea foam was instantly frozen into snow . Unfortunately is was too cold too stay for long and too dangerous to walk around much but it was worth the stop.

On our final day we found a cute cafe in Dublin owned by a kind French woman from Bordeaux. Crepes were the cafe's specialty but I was treated to a mouthwatering roblechon and bacon tartine. Oh so good! After we filled our tummies we headed to our next Diageo brand, Guinness. Typically visitors go on a self-guided tour but Bernice was able to secure a tour guide, Adam, for us. Adam was the 4th generation is his family to work at Guinness so he knew everything about the brewing process, the building (including the secret tunnels), and the history. The tour here was very different from Bushmills though since Guinness is much more commercial and, being located in Dublin city center, receives many more tourists. Adam did a great job of showing us around and gave us a detailed lesson in drawing Guinness from a tap. I'd heard many times in the past that Guinness in Ireland doesn't taste like Guinness anywhere else in the world and they were right. There is something so fresh about it here that this was probably the only time I could finish a whole pint of it. On top of that the bar area is located on the very top floor of the building with glass walls so that you get a 360 degree view of Dublin. We finished our pints and had a great lunch of all types of food made with Guinness but sadly we had to head to the airport and go back to London. What I'll miss the most about Ireland will definitely be the people. Everywhere we went everyone was so kind to us and actually would stop and talk instead of ignoring us.

After our trip to Ireland the girls were only in London for one more night. Before they headed back to the States, I took the girls to a small neighborhood cafe to try a full English breakfast. We also had a little bit of time to head over to Abbey Road where the Abbey Road Studios is located. If you're not a Beatles fan, the Abbey Road Studios is where they recorded nearly all of their albums including their final one, appropriately named Abbey Road. As thousands of other tourists do, we stopped traffic to mimic the Beatles' famous Abbey Road cover picture in the zebra crossing.

Pictures are on the right.