After the disaster that was yesterday, I felt I should be classy and take it easy today. So we didn’t start drinking until about 2.

After all, today was a day dedicated to drinking. We had prepaid for a tour of the Old Jameson Distillery as well as the Guinness Storehouse. After a hungover meal at McDonalds (and getting hit on by the embarrassingly attractive Scandanavian McDonalds counter boy) we stumbled our way to the Jameson Distillery for our Whiskey tour! Now, I had actually been on this tour already, but only part of it, and only on accident. When I came here by myself a long time ago, I wandered into the Jameson distillery and started following this group of people not knowing that they were there on a paid tour. Next thing I know, I’m being selected as a whiskey taster and being offered drink after drink by the bartender at the lobby bar. I honestly didn’t know that I had been on a tour I should have paid for, but this time, after about 10 minutes and realizing I’d already done this before, I felt a bit bad.

Regardless, the tour was amazing, even for a second time, and I paid a lot more attention this time. Diana was chosen to be one of the whiskey tasters so at the end of the tour, she got to do a blind taste test of Jameson, Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels. I don’t think she was too fond of the whiskeys, so she let Brian on the Trout finish them off and I think he was quite grateful. We met some really nice people from Canada and sat and chatted with them for a good hour sipping our free whiskey drinks (I picked Jameson and Cranberry juice. YUM!) before departing and making the walk to Guinness.

I knew this would be the highlight of Brian’s day, but I wasn’t sure he knew what to expect. I can’t speak for the kid, but I do think he had a good time, and judging by the amount of money he spent in the gift shop afterwards (including buying a Guinness tin whistle. Legend.) I think he was satisfied. We had our free pint of Guinness up at the bar on the very top floor which has amazing views of the city (and where Diana and I found quite a few nice things to look at inside as well). From here, we did even more walking, down to the Dublin Castle, to the old Viking Memorial which I still can’t figure out what it’s for, to Christchurch Cathedral and to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and park (my favorite in the city!) before heading to a Spar and back to the hostel to make some grub and get some work done.

One amazing thing about traveling with another travel blogger is that they understand (truly understand) when you have to sit down and write something. For me, it was putting the final touches on an article for Boots N All on the Irish language for St. Patrick’s Day. However, as expected, while I sat and wrote, Diana and Brian on the Trout drank an entire bottle of Jameson between the two of them and were, for lack of a better word, absolutely tanked.

I got jealous and needed to join, so we headed back to Temple Bar for some more Irish McLovin. We headed to a bar called Fitzsimmon's on the opposite end of Temple Bar which had a good live band going when we got there and we felt it a good place to sit for a bit. Only. Yet again. We never left. Diana (bless her) got us some friends by asking some random solo (gorgeous) boy at the bar if he would come sit with us because he looked lonely. He did (duh) and then his friends showed up (awesome) and they were amazing company. A French guy, a Spanish guy and a Hungarian girl – perfect. We had such an amazing time and the succession of musical acts playing were really great. I had a run-in with a drive by snogger on the dance floor and after about 5 or 6 tequila shots with Romaine for his birthday, we decided to head home around 3 or 4. Naturally, on the way, we made more friends. A bunch of Irish boys walking down the street heading back to a house party. Brian was riding the trout by this point (aka he had forgotten his own name he was so wasted) and I was thinking of poor Emily who we had to pick up at the airport the next day, so we politely declined and headed back to the hostel – but not before starting a fight in the street (some drunk man came up and started grabbing me and Knight Brian and my new troop of Irish man friends had their way with him – good job boys!).

This is going to be a long week.