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The bed absorbed me - naughty bed, and the bathroom was emphasising how bald I was getting - we had to get out of the hotel, before it insulted and digested us any more. Time to invade parliament.
We were given a tour of the government buildings, which had some sort of klaxon running intermittently - apparently this was calling people from their offices into a session. Except noone was at work, so there was noone to call - odd. We were mainly shown round a series of uninteresting conference rooms, where people might eat biscuits and point at flip charts. We did manage to include the Taoiseach's office - this term apparently needed explanation in case we thought it was a tea-shop (actually, I have no idea whether someone cracked that joke at the time or whether I wrote the words "tea shop" in my notes as a really poor pun - either way, it's not really very funny). Every tour should have an obligatory smart-arsed old person who chips in with stupid incorrect facts or ludicrous questions, and our tour was not different. I found it somewhat interesting that this particular person, having insulted everyone present with her... er... presence, then went on to take a complimentary cup of water from one of the conference rooms. I don't believe that the water was complimentary to tour visitors - indeed, we'd paid nothing, so I don't think they owed us anything (at least I don't remember paying much). We were also being tailed around the parliament building (The Doyle - or something like that) by some beefy security people - looking to ensure we didn't set bombs or steal anything. Clearly they weren't doing their job - the lady stole water, and precious seconds of our lives.
A tour of Dublin is not about the government buildings, though, it's about one thing. So we headed back to our hotel room to get ready for one of the main events of the trip (or at least one of the main planned events - I'll pass over the fact that the chance meeting of our first night was probably the most significant event in our relationship, given that it ultimately ended it). The main event of the trip was a run around the whole of Dublin on its tour bus which would, eventually end at the Guinness Brewery. We had intended to go around the brewery on our previous trip to the city, but had failed to find it. We'd had a go at finding the brewery on the first night and found it to be shut. So this was third time lucky. The excitement - hopping on and off the hop-on, hop-off tour bus...
In the end, we took 4 different buses on the tour. The driver does the commentary live and each driver must be employed based on their personality and patter as well as for their driving skills. Our drivers can be summarised as:
Henry Kelly - a soundalike more than a lookalike. He thought it noteworthy to mention the demonstration for Palestine.
The comedian - he told us that "the guy who invented crosswords lived on this street - six houses down and two across".
The other comedian - who decided to suggest that Houston station was named for Whitney Houston (I think it's Heuston, actually).
Er... hey... that other guy - a man so unimportant that I chose to remember his existence but nothing about him.
For reasons best known to ourselves we chose a tour around St Patrick's Cathedral as our pre-brewery visit. This is where Jonathan Swift was Dean - he wrote Gulliver's travels, don't you know. The cathedral is really small, so small that you can't even fit one foot in the door - it's like it is populated by really small people who... no, wait, that's Lilliput. My mistake.
Enough shilly-shallying - it was time to visit the place where they brew the black stuff.
19 May 2004
Ashley Frieze