Guinness

As we approached, this is what we saw....

Pretty display by the company archives.

Gravity Bar

The Gate.

This summer my friend and I spent two weeks hiking around Ireland. Ireland is amazing. Along the way, I found myself falling in love with the smaller towns of the coast, however, it is Dublin that can offer the chance to tour the Guinness Storehouse. HERE is the official website.

The storehouse was a fermentation plant until 1988 when it switched over to housing 7 floors of history for visitors to explore. It is found in St. James's Gate Brewery and is the home of Guinness. The floors are built so that when you look at a cross section of the factory it appears as if a giant pint glass is standing in the middle of the building. It's hard to describe, but you can see what I mean in one of the pictures I posted. According to the brochure I grabbed while there, the pint glass the storehouse makes would hold 14.3 million pints of Guinness. One can only imagine the mayhem a pint glass the large full of Guinness would cause.

HERE is a link that describes what you will see and learn on each of the floors. I really enjoyed level 2 which is dedicated to Guinness advertising, the Gravity Bar rotating high above Dublin, and of course, the gift shop. However, I will throw out that if anyone with any ties to Guinness ever reads this, the gift shop needs more shot glass variety. Just a suggestion.

The dollar is worth crap right now, but if you decide traveling is important no matter how the economy is doing, as we did, the tour won't even come close to breaking your budget and is worth your time. Besides, you get a free pint of Guinness in the Gravity Bar at the completion of your tour, who can argue with that?

For more great Guinness information, click HERE.