"Dublin"

Apparently a sailing class was practicing in our path to the port!

Not really Dublin.  But Ireland none-the-less.

Today we were supposed to go to Dublin, which was founded about 800AD by the “Vikings” since it was such a great port.  But we didn’t port in Dublin, instead we anchored off the coast and tendered into the port of Dun Laoghaire, a SOLID 45 minutes from downtown Dublin, and more during rush hour.  So, the tender was about 30 minutes each way, plus about an hour bus ride each way, so three hours of our trip was commuting.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Helpful!!

Saw this at the port.

Yeah, this is Dublin!!

The King (of England) used to have an apartment here.

We had the morning off, so enjoyed breakfast and some leisure time before our departure about 12:30.  After an early lunch, we hustled down to the very long queue for the tender.  We arrived portside about 1:15 for our 1:10 meeting time, and boarded the bus (not last).  The critical part of the tour was a tour of the Teeling Distillery with tasting, and a little city tour on the way.

The vat where they wash the grist before moving the liquid on.

At one time, Irish Whiskey made up some 80% of all of the whiskey consumed in the world, and all of it was made in about a 3-mile radius called “The Golden Circle”.  A number of things happened including the Irish war for independence (from Britain), which excluded the Irish whiskey from all British territories, and then the US prohibition, which killed that market.  That basically killed the Irish Whiskey market (down to 2% of the world market).  The last of them stopped distilling in Dublin by 1976.  Well, Teeling restarted in 2015, and that is the facility we toured.

Irish Whiskey is triple distilled.  These three "pot stills" are
named for the three daughters of the two guys that restarted the
distillery.

The three daughters born after the distillery was set up with
barrels dedicated on their year of birth.  They will be given the
barrels on their 21st birthdays!

Samples of the barrels used for aging the whiskey.
If you look close, you see the flavors contributed
by the various barrel sources.

(The vault for the girls' barrels.)

They have a lot of pride in their product, and they are quite proud of their methods, which include aging in various barrels for interesting flavor profiles.

On the "menu"!

After the distillery tour, we moved into the tasting.  We sampled four products, including one that is peated (they buy barley that is germinated and dried in Scotland with peat).  We were impressed with the set up, mostly because we looked around and saw that our tour had the best tasting (with 4, instead of 1 or 3).

Touring is tough work!

The US Embassy (from the road)

A statue for Oscar Wilde

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin

The city wall.  Long ago, it was called the "pail".  Those inside
the wall were "in the pail".  Those outside, who sort of lived a
wild existence, was "beyond the pail".

Traffic.  Even on vacation.

After the tour, we jumped in the bus and fought traffic back to the port, including a near accident when one driver decided a right hand tour from the left lane right in front of our bus was a good plan.  We finally got to the pier, waited for a tender, bounced all the way back, and got ready for dinner.  We were having dinner with a couple we’d met at the hotel and seen around a lot.  He is a retired airline captain and she is actually a former flight attendant for World Airways.  We had a very nice dinner, although it was a little late.

Dun Laoghaire parking.

Theresa checked out the musically talent, but as we were late, there were no seats, and tomorrow is an early start, so we called it a night.