In Case You Had Your Doubts...

I'm definitely not Irish.

How do I know this you ask? How can I be sure when 6 million people in the world are in some way Irish? Well the answer is very simple folks - I hate Guinness.

That's right, it's not only that I have a mild distaste for the stuff, or that it makes me bloated, Guinness is just decidedly dreadful. It's bitter, it's weird and there's just nothing good I can say about it. I don't understand for the life of me why people part with hard earned cash to subject themselves to this truly awful beverage.

I refer to the diagram above.

Now Diagram A shows how much of my pint of Guinness I had before I got sick of it.

Diagram B shows how much I had before I finally gave up. You see, even all the free alcohol in the drink couldn't induce me to finish it. Gah.

Actually the whole Guinness Storehouse experience was kind of bizarre. The dim lighting and the weird placement of odd bits of antiquated machinery everywhere gave a very unsettling 'Alice in Wonderland' kind of feeling and I half expected a crazed Oompa Loompa to ambush me at any given moment. Have you ever seen that episode of Futurama where Fry and Leyla go to the factory of that drink and they put on a weird front where they take them down the river and behind the scenes it was just a huge monster producing excrement? Well if you've seen that episode you may understand the creepy feeling I got going through the Storehouse.

Not that it was all bad - the bar where they 'treat' you to the pint of Guinness included in your entry fee has absolutely awesome views of Dublin city. And (as Forrest Gump would say) that's all I have to say about that.

Today I visited Newgrange which is a neolithic passage burial mound just out of Dublin. It is the only properly excavated mound in the area open to the public despite the fact that there are some 40 odd such passage burial mounds in the area. It was actually quite an impressive experience. Much better than Stonehenge. Because it is actually an enclosed structure they let you in in very small groups and simulate for you the light show that occurs only at dawn on the winter solstice when a shaft of light pierces the passage. (In neolithic times this would have been the only time in the entire year that the light penetrates the inner chamber of the tomb) And thinking that this incredible structure was made 5000 odd years ago is just mind-boggling. Personally I think this is much more impressive than Stonehenge (and Newgrange predates Stonehenge by around 1000 years) because the tour allows a much more intimate connection to develop between you and the structure. Plus it helps that because you never heard of the place before you don't expect it to be impressive.

But apart from the actual mound the scenery was just amazing. You can see so far into the distance not necessarily because it's on a high hill but just due to the lay of the land.