The last day in Dublin was our free day. We each were asked to propose a final project/paper in which we interviewed random Irish people and then used the responses to help formulate an argument. Naturally, I used the day to sleep and sight-see.
We (Christine & I) started off the morning by sleeping until noon. We went out and grabbed breakfast at a supermarket by our hotel before meeting up with some of the boys to go to the Jameson factory tour. It was a 25-ish minute walk through Dublin to get there, which was nice because it was through a part of Dublin that I hadn't explored yet. We passed a lot of beautiful buildings including Dublin's courthouse and a bunch of random churches.
When we arrived at the Jameson factory they put us in a room to watch a video, and after the video they asked for eight volunteers to do a whiskey tasting after the tour. I volunteered along with my friends Christine and Dave. The tour was relatively interesting, although my favorite part was definitely at the very beginning. Apparently back in the day when they were making Jameson they did it in a factory that had a lot of mice. In order to solve this problem, they got a cat for the factory that caught about 20 mice a day. The cat's name was Smithy, and all of the workers loved him. When he died, the workers were devastated, so they decided to have him stuffed. They still have the original Smithy (there have been many replacements since the 1800s) and he was at the tour. I've now decided that I might need to stuff Lizzie when she kicks the bucket, but we will see...
After the tour we did the whiskey tasting, and it solidified my hatred for whiskey haha. At the tasting they taught us how to professionally (although I use this term loosely) taste whiskey, and we got to try Jameson (Irish whiskey), Jack Daniels (American whiskey), and Jim Bean premium (Scotch whiskey). (Side note: despite all of my recently-acquired whiskey expertise, these might not be the correct brands of whiskey, as I'm trying to do this from memory...) At the end we received a spiffy certificate certifying us as official whiskey-tasters. Hoorah, hoorah. Another side note: if you are ever in a situation where you need to drink whiskey and don't like it, try mixing it with cranberry juice. It is absolutely delicious and is apparently a traditional Irish way to drink Jameson (besides straight-up, of course).
When we left Jameson we took the long way back to the hotel so that we could try to see some more of Dublin. The sun also came out, which was a nice change, since I don't think I've seen the sun since before New Year's. When we returned to the hotel we met up with a larger group of people to go out to a nice dinner on our last night in Dublin. We stopped at a restaurant/bar down the street from our hotel. It was tasty.
After dinner we all met in the lobby to walk to Dublin's theatre to see 'The Seafarer' by Connor McPherson. It was an interesting play to say the least. It was a comedy that made fun of Irish alcoholism, but it also had a weird underlying story going on having to do with love, friendship, and the battle between Heaven and Hell. Deep stuff. I did enjoy it though, and for those of you who watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there was a Charlie-esque character to keep everyone entertained during the more somber parts of the play.
After the play everyone was pretty exhausted, and we had an early morning/long day ahead of us, so we decided to go out for just a little bit before heading to bed for the night. Unfortunately for me, I made the unwise decision to get an Irish coffee at 10:45 at night, and couldn't get to sleep until 2:00 am. Poor life choices.
P.S. If my stories get boring/uninteresting/far too detailed and long, please comment or e-mail me. I don't want to bore everyone to death, but I don't want to leave you hanging if you want more details either. And everyone knows how much I love to talk/ramble/tell pointless stories...
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