Guinness
I had my first Guinness last night at the Leeson Lounge. I didn’t intend to have one, but for some reason the pub didn’t serve Harp, which is the light beer or lager made by the Guinness company. The Guinness last night was like nothing else. The only things I can compare it to are coffee and steak. Its rich taste and color resemble coffee and it’s filling like a steak–that’s why I only had one before I switched to Carlsberg. Maybe I should start a new liquid diet trend–drink Guinness and eat nothing.
Before everyone showed up at the pub we went on a bus tour of the city. One of the places we passed was the Guinness brewery. After we passed the brewery and the ridiculously long line of tourists we stopped in front of a mental institution two blocks away.
Jonathan Swift founded the institution as a place where the disturbed could be treated as patients instead of as animals. The bus driver pointed out the absurdity of having a mental institution, which often houses people with alcohol addiction, within a couple of blocks of the Guinness brewery where you can actually smell the stout in the air.
A few stops later I went to the Writer’s Museum:
The two-room display (not counting the small library upstairs) is a quaint introduction to Ireland’s literary history. To see playwright and IRA member Brendan Behan’s typewriter and a handwritten letter about his time in Hollywood where he hung out with Sinatra and the Marx brothers was worth the six euros.
Did you know Brendan Behan was paid in barrels of stout by the Guinness company to create their advertising slogan? He guzzled all of the stout and at the last minute he came up with: “Guinness makes you drunk.”