Day 1 in Dublin!

So, so far Dublin is pretty awesome.

For one, we are staying in a castle. Enough said.

Today we made our first foray out into the attractions of Dublin, and hit a lot of the big ones, mostly involving the letter A. Alcohol, Animals, and more Alcohol. Or, the Guinness Storehouse, the Dublin Zoo, and the Jameson Distillery. We did all these things by way of a "Hop On, Hop Off" type touristy bus, which also drove us by all the other slightly more cultured things, too, like St Patrick's Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, Trinity College (and the Book of Kells) and James Joyce's favorite bar, Oscar Wilde's birthplace, and a bunch of other things. It was a nice way to be introduced to everything by very charismatic Irish bus drivers (I think all Irish bus drivers in charge of telling tourists about things sing. So far we are 3 for 3), and we have a good idea about what other sites we want to see while here.
On to what we did:

Christ Church Cathedral, from the bus!

It probably would have been good if I had ever had Guinness before...

They have quite the self guided tour! The Dublin site was the original brewery, but they have since moved out to the country where there is enough space for their works. So the old brewery has been converted into an impressive museum about Guinness, but also beer brewing and a little bit of history.

Guinness is pretty good, actually. But apparently it's best here...

And then we looked at animals. Zoos are kind of our thing, so we spent an hour walking around. Dublin has a pretty nice zoo!

We decided to front load the alcohol events, so we also went for a tour/tasting at Jameson Distillery. The tour guide was hilarious, which definitely made it worth it. Both the Guinness and the Jameson tours were pretty commercial, but it was fun all the same.

We had dinner at this really lovely little restaurant that served very tasty Irish food, and then finally headed back to the Castle. We are on the top floor by the tower thingy, so we have a very nice view of the castle roof from here!