Today the hop on, hop off bus tour was on the agenda. This allowed me to get to places that were a bit further afield, including the Guinness Storehouse and the Kilmainham Gaol. The first driver was also the tour guide and he was really wonderful. Not so much for the others. However, they were just a small part of the whole experience.
While sitting in traffic, the bus driver said that unless we already had purchased a ticket for Kilmainham Gaol, there was no point getting off to see it. The tickets are sold out in advance and with this week being the anniversary week of the Easter Rising, the tickets have been sold out for some time. We could try to get in line first thing in the morning and hope for a cancellation. I immediately went online and was able to get a ticket for the afternoon. Very fortunate as the rest of the month is, indeed, sold out.
My first stop was at Guinness Storehouse. I had purchased a ticket for the 10:15 tour. I had originally thought that was the time of the bus leaving, and didn't realize it was for the Guinness tour. I tried changing to a later time but that was near impossible. So, 10:15 it was.
However, because of the traffic snarls at that time of the day, I wasn't at the Storehouse until 10:30. I needn't have panicked as the tour is self-guided, so I'm not really sure why they bother asking you to choose a time.
I was quite thankful, really, that the tour was self-guided as this allowed me to move quickly through the parts of the tour that were similar to what I had just seen at Tennents last week. The tour is not through the actual factory, but rather within the visitor centre itself. That also made it easier to get from one exhibit to the next.
We were given a free taste and I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth it was. I find Guinness at home to have a bitter after taste. Not so here. Which made knowing I had purchased a free pint that much more appealing.
Back on the bus and off to the Gaol. The buses no longer stop at the Gaol so it was a bit of a walk. Not an unpleasant one at all. I went the long way round (by road) but returned via the grounds of the old Royal Hospital.
The tour of the gaol itself was quite moving and a wonderful walk through history. The tour guide, Mick, was a truly fantastic storyteller and I thoroughly enjoyed learning from him.
It was so fascinating for me to see the cells where some of the people whose graves I had visited yesterday had been housed. It really added to the whole experience.
I was absolutely stunned while standing in the execution yard and hearing about James Connelly being brought in, off his death bed, by ambulance and being propped up on a chair so he could be executed in order to be made an example of. So cruel and heartless.
As I was standing in the execution yard, I noticed a statue across the street. It was both moving and humbling to see. There are 14 faceless figures, all blindfolded and each with a different pattern of bullet holes in their chest to show where they had been executed by firing squad. At their "feet' was their verdict. The statue is called Proclamation and is for the martyrs who penned the proclamation that set off the Easter Rising as well as for others who were killed for their political activism around the rising.
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