Guinness is good for you...
Friday, 7 September 2007
So their advertising campaigns would lead you to believe! In fact, it is, who Gnu?!
Yes, we did the traditional tourist thing in Dublin and visited the old Guinness factory. To put old into context, Guinness has been around for longer than New Zealand has!
Making Guinness seemed easy really at first, I mean it only has 4 ingredients: barley, yeast, hops and water. But as we were wandering through the self-guided tour, we found out that it is really quite a lengthy process.
When we got to the adding water part, there was an amazing water feature, where water was running over the clear glass ceiling above and pouring off the ceiling into a huge waterfall. An excellent photo opportunity for the many tourists!!! Yes, this included us, we had a token photo under it as well : )
The marketing campaigns were very entertaining using selling points like; Guinness helps you overcome illness, insomnia . . . and the list goes on. It seems one of their artists was quite obsessed with animals as well, which made for some interesting posters.
We had lunch at their restaurant and their beef and Guinness stew was amazing, a must-try! It even inspired Em to download the recipe off their website and try it at home.
Finally, the highlight of the tour – the free pint of Guinness at the gravity bar. This was like a nightclub - but open only during daylight hours. It was packed full of people and the music was pumping. The bar had amazing views looking out over Dublin and many people taking advantages of yet more photo opportunities.
So, you might be thinking, is Guinness the new Tui, Corona, or Export Gold for the wandering chimps?? Well, Em struggled to get a whole glass down her (but she did and is very proud of it), and Tim is coming around to it and drank it with ease. Locals tell us that it’s an acquired taste and it takes 6 or 7 pints to really start liking it, so I s’pose there’s no harm in having a few more pints to make a fully informed decision!
Labels: Travel
posted by Tim @ 3:54 pm,
