Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

I was complimented on my ability to sleep by the passenger sitting next to me on the trans-Atlantic flight. I was pretty much out for the whole thing. If the infant in the seat right in front of me cried, I must have slept through it.

Arriving at 10am made it a challenge to power through the day, but I seem to have managed it. I took a bus from the airport to the city center, checked in to my hotel, resisted the temptation to take a "quick nap", and headed out into the city.

I had a lovely pot pie and some tea at a cafe called The Queen of Tarts, and finished it off with a rustic apple tart. Between the caffeine and the sugar, I was good to go.

Next was a walk over to the Guinness Storehouse. It's somewhere between a normal unguided brewery tour (plaques that talk about the various stages of the brewing process) and The World of Coca-Cola. There are a bunch of interesting videos, including this one about how barrels were made that happened to come across Hackaday just three days ago, and historical tidbits (like how the brewery built a 22 inch gauge internal railway to move barrels around, and how various advances in transportation have changed how beer is shipped). But there's also a ton of information about their advertising and branding over the years: recreated(?) ephemera, lots of selfie-optimized mascots (toucans, the seal balancing a pint, a tortoise), and two theater areas that just show historic commercials. There were some great views from their top floor pouring room, where I had a pint with blackcurrant syrup (which I would not recommend).

After all of that pop culture, I continued on to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It's a fairly small place, but there were some interesting pieces. I liked a set of works that appear from a distance to be black squares, but upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be textured into spirals and patterns. Outside there was a formal garden with sculptures mixed in with the plants.

I intended to stay on the south side of the Liffey for the walk back, but am apparently so bad at figuring out where to cross the street that I managed to find myself on the north side for a bit. Oops.

I made a rest stop at my hotel room (I'd managed to run out the battery in my phone and the battery in my phone's battery-recharging case), and then went out for dinner at a local pub/steakhouse. There was a wait of over an hour for a table, but I realized that, since my real goal was to stay up until it was actually time to go to sleep, that suited me fine. I had an Irish beer (Dunvargan Comeragh Challenger) and an Irish whiskey (Teeling Small Batch) while I waited.

Now that the sun has finally gone down, I think it's safe for me to turn in. Hopefully I'll be on a relatively normal schedule here...