Dublin. - Day Dot

 And we are off again. After less than 3 days home, we went back to the airport to catch a flight. Wednesday evening, we took a JetBlue flight direct to Dublin. The flight was fine, it was not as nice as a regular international flight (mostly food wise) but the seats were comfortable. I didn’t sleep as much as I would have liked, but the flight was under 6 hours. Upon landing in Dublin, we waited in the longest queue to get through immigration. It seemed as though ALL the airports on the eastern seaboard had flights arriving at the same time and it took about an hour to get through. We had a cab driver waiting for us that the hotel set up so we didn’t have to figure much out while we were so tired. He took us to the hotel - The Grafton, which is not far from Trinity College. We were met by Noel who Mom had been emailing with for suggestions prior to our trip. We brought him Lindsay’s Local banana bread and chocolate chip cookies as a thank you. Luckily, our room was ready by the time we arrived so we were able to go upstairs and take a nap before going out to explore.

In the afternoon, we went out to explore our neighborhood. There are a lot of cute shops, restaurants and pubs. There is a cafe across the street where we got our first meal since Boston (lunch??). Mom had this open faced chicken club and I had a burger with Brie, bacon and hot honey. It was so delicious. After lunch, we wandered the neighborhood to get our bearings and kill time before our Whiskey tour later. The buildings here are really pretty and the weather was actually nice so I tried to snap a bunch of photos while the light was on the brighter side. 

We met our tour guide at Powerscourt Townhouse Center. It was once a mansion belonging to a single family and now it is like a small shopping mall with mostly women owned businesses. We originally signed up for a storytelling food tour but not enough other people signed up so they rebooked us for the Whiskey tour. Our tour guide Graîinne was amazing. We told her we weren’t really whiskey drinkers but hadn’t really tried Irish Whiskey and were open to trying anything. We went to 3 different pubs where we had 2 whiskeys each and she explained the history of Irish Whiskey and explained the different types. We also got a small snack at each pub. The cheese was of course amazing. Mom and I liked one of the whiskeys called Writers Tears which was Copper Pot whiskey that was aged in wine barrels so it had more of a wine flavor. I also liked the Powers we had - also a pot style. It had a lot of good caramel flavor so I think it will be good to use for baking at home. 

After the tour, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep. Full day planned today in Dublin and the sun is shining for now.