The Parting Glass: A Liquid History Lesson and a Leave-taking

So before this blog post, I think there might need to be a small conversation. As most of you know, I'm 20 years old right now. Of course, this means that I am not legal to consume alcohol in the United States of America. However, in most of the world, the drinking age is younger. At its highest it's usually 18, because when you're a legal adult you're a legal adult with all the responsibilities and privileges of being a legal adult. All the countries I have visited and all the countries I will visit on the trip have a drinking age that is lower than 21, which means that I am legal to drink in all of these countries. And I do and I have and I plan to keep doing it. I'm not going crazy. I'm not making bad decisions, but occasionally on this trip I am exercising my right as an adult to indulge in some adult beverages in a responsible manner. When that is a part of my travel experience I'm going to talk about it on this blog, because that's the purpose of this blog. So this is just a heads up and a content advisory, because this is, of course, relevant to what I did on Friday.

But not until after lunch!

So I woke up at like 10:30 the morning of the 22nd, because I had been up for 30+ hours, I deserved to sleep for 14. I got up and decided that since it was a kind of rainy day I would try to find indoor activities to do, and one of the most popular indoor activities in Ireland is... drinking! Just kidding, in Ireland that's an outdoor activity too. And generally just a favorite activity. But due to this Irish love of alcohol, the old Jameson distillery was a 20 minute walk from my hostel, and I heard that the tour was a fun thing to do. I tried to get my tickets online, but it didn't work, so I decided to just head over to the distillery and see if I could get tickets. I walked down to the building and got my tickets for 1, which was just enough time to have lunch before the tour. I actually ate in the distillery itself, and it was really cool. It's an awesome building. The food was good too. Then at 1 I started my tour. 

For a variety of reasons, I'm not the most alcohol-litearte person in the world, but since I choose to drink, I think it's important for me to be somewhat educated about alcohol. I don't want to drink swill just to get drunk, I want to drink quality alcoholic beverages in moderation because I enjoy the taste. So I really enjoyed the whiskey tour because it was really helpful concerning my education in alcohol. I learned how whiskey is made and how Jameson specifically makes their whiskey. At the end of the tour we got to try samples of three different kinds of whiskey for a comparison: Scotch, Bourbon, and Jameson whiskey, and they told us a little bit about how they were made and pointed out different elements in the taste to us. That especially helped me understand better the different tastes and ways whiskey can be made and how that affects the product.It was absolutely fascinating. 

The place I visited in Dublin used to be the Jameson production center for a long time. They started in Dublin in 1780 and managed to make it there all the way until the 20th century. They eventually had to move it out to the country, because they basically ran out of room. But now they buy all their barely from farmers within 100 miles of their distillery, so that's cool. 

Next, on Aunt Jen's suggestion, I walked to the other side of the river to the Guinness storehouse. This was the original Guinness production site, and they actually still make Guinness there, but there are other breweries as well all over the world. This was less a tour and more an exhibit. I saw the original lease that Arthur Guinness signed in 1756 for the land on which the storehouse resides. He rented it for 9000 years. That's confidence. Then I went through like 7 levels of their storehouse and saw exhibits on how the beer is made (honestly, it's made exactly the same way as whiskey for about 60% of the process.) It was really interesting, since I more or less knew that beer came from fermenting some kind of grain, but I learned a lot about the specifics of that process. And honestly, the process may be complicated, but the recipe is super simple: barley, hops, water, and yeast. I got to see all the old equipment they used and then watched a video about how they do it today, and if you look out the windows of the tourist part you can actually see the Dublin production center. 

After that I saw a bunch of cool old Guinness advertisements, including the Guinness harp. I actually played a model of it. It was kitschy, but fun. About halfway through the building, I did a tasting. Now, I don't actually like beer, and I'm not sure I'll ever like beer, but I was told by multiple people that I had to try Guinness in Ireland, since... I don't really know, actually. Something about it's from Dublin and getting a real Guinness in Dublin is somehow... more real than the Guinness you can buy anywhere in the world from any of their like 17 production centers...? ANYWAY, I sucked it up and tried the beer. I actually learned how to taste it and I got an itsy-bitsy glass of Guinness. Look at it. It's so cute and tiny!

But really, that was about as much as I really needed. I also got a free pint with the price of admission, but I elected to use that on a soft drink instead, because I would not have enjoyed a full pint of that stuff. 

But yeah, the baby glass of beer is what the official Guinness testers use to test the beer that comes out of the brewery, because they have to ensure quality. So there are people whose jobs are to sit and drink those tiny glasses of beer all day long. Contact Guinness for more information about employment opportunities. So the purpose of this part of the storehouse was to teach you how they do it. They had a room full of weird columns of vapor that smelled like each of the elements in the beer and they explained where and how in the beer you would taste them. Then you went into the room where you drank your beer and a guy told you how the official beer tasters drink the beer. Because there is a specific way. You have to inhale, then take a generous mouthfull of the beer (because Guinness has a bitter head, so you have to get past that) and swish it around your mouth. You want to be able to taste it everywhere, since different flavors come out in different parts of the mouth. Then you swallow it and exhale through your nose. So yeah, we did that. And like I said, I'm not a beer person, and I would not have been able to drink a free pint of it, but as beer goes, it really wasn't bad. 

One more Guinness fact: even though it is really dark and looks black, Guinness is actually deep red. If you look in the above picture (or hold any Guinness up to the light) you see that the bottom is actually a red color. This color actually comes from the roasted barley that they use to make the beer. Guinness uses roasted barley, malted barley, and unmalted barley in their beer, so it has all of those flavors in it. 

Anyway, even though I'm not a convert to beer, I really enjoyed the tour, because it was interesting history and information about how an important product is made. I did skip out on some bits, like the part where they teach you how to pour your own pint of Guinness (the end result would have been drinking the pint, so...), but it seemed really cool and a shockingly specific process. So I ended my tour on top of the building, where they have a really great panoramic bar, and I enjoyed my fanta and my view of London. 

At this point it was like 6:00 in the evening, because I like to take my time when I'm visiting somewhere, so I headed back towards my hostel for dinner. I ate at a really great Lebanese restaurant. I had this appetizer with lamb cooked in pita bread and it was glorious. Then I meandered back to my hostel and headed to bed. I had a really early flight the next day, so I went to bed fairly early. 

Since there's honestly not much to say about Saturday, I'll go ahead and do it here, but I'm saving Dubrovnik proper for another post. There's too much to say! 

So Saturday I woke up at 4:30 and caught a shuttle to the airport. On the way to the airport, I heard a lady utter the phrase "I left my ukulele at the hostel" and I marveled at the utter strangeness of life. I also enjoyed the Irish landscape, because I do really love Ireland and I'm so glad I got to start my journey there. It's a place that really feels like home to me and one that accepted me and got me through my jet lag and general exhaustion and grumpiness while it welcomed me back to Europe. 

So then I had a minor panic in the Dublin airport, because I arrived an hour and forty minutes before my flight, which I figured was plenty of time, since it was 6 in the morning on a Saturday. Who would be traveling from Dublin at 6 in the morning on a Saturday? As it turns out: a LOT of people. I waited in line to drop my bag until close enough to my flight time that I started to get a little worried, but I did get my bag checked and get through security without a problem. I always panic a little bit going through security, especially that close to flight time. There is just so much that can go wrong, and even if I've been through security three times already that day, I worry. But I made it, rushed to my gate, bought breakfast to go (I had kind of planned on eating at the airport, but didn't really have the time to do that) and walked out to my plane. It was a pretty uneventful flight. I read, I listened to music, I stared into space. 

I disembarked at the Frankfurt airport at 10 in the morning and my flight wasn't until 4. So I collected my belongings and headed out. The other thing about this travel day, besides being very long, is that I booked each of the three flights I took separately, so on each flight I had to leave the sanctum behind the security checkpoint, go to baggage claim, get my luggage, check in again and check my bag, and go back through security. But it was fine. I had the time to do it. So I meandered around the absolutely massive Frankfurt airport for a little bit, because I was slightly lost and in no hurry. Eventually I found the area where I needed to check my bag and I got all the logistics sorted out, and then I went and sat and had lunch at a nice Asian restaurant in the building. I then got a cup of tea, because I was exhausted, and went through security. I boarded the plane,  and did... exactly the same thing I did on my last plane. Except this time I was on Croatian Airlines, so the in-flight magazine was about Croatia, so I read that, because why not? I was coming to Croatia based of a handful of recommendations, a TV show, and a travel guide I checked out from the library. I actually flipped through a different travel book in the Frankfurt airport while I was waiting, just to see if there was anything super important I hadn't found out earlier. There wasn't. 

So then I landed in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. It was a pretty small airport, but my layover was only a couple of hours, so I sat and read and got Croatian kuna from the ATM and had dinner at a restaurant. The risotto was terrible, which was sad, but the view of the mountains behind the runway was lovely, and bread and olive oil are hard to do wrong. After dinner, on the way down to the security line, the most exciting event of the entire day happened... I hit my head on the stairs. 

So what happened was I had been reading during dinner, as I often do when I dine alone, and I had been specifically reading comic books, because they're good, light reading for a travel day. So I was walking to security from behind a set of stairs that had open edges, while trying to finish that issue of She-Hulk, and I though I was BESIDE the stairs, so that when they reached the same level as my head I would continue to pass them without noticing. But I was too caught up in She-Hulk's courtroom battle with Daredevil in Captain America's murder trial (I swear that actually happened. 

 Aren't comics great?) and it turns out I was UNDERNEATH the stairs and so when I reached the point they would be level with my head, my head hit them.

 Forming the lump on my head in the above picture.
But hey, I made it through security and was hanging out at my gate, when I realized I should probably put some ice on my head, so I got a bag of ice from the bartender and wrapped it up in my spare t-shirt I keep in my carry-on bag, resulting in the following picture.

 She's beauty, she's grace.

But anyway, excitement over, I got on the plane without a problem and had a short and uneventful flight from Zagreb to the southern costal town of Dubrovnik, from whence I am writing this post.

I landed in Dubrovnik at 10 at night, collected my luggage and got on a bus. Unfortunately I couldn't see much due to the darkness, but what I could experience was already pretty amazing. I was worried about coming to Croatia because I felt unprepared. I can't speak the language, I know very little about the country, there are no trains, I have to rely on busses and the kindness of strangers to make sure I don't get lost, and that was kind of freaking me out before I came, but I'm so glad I decided to, because even the crazy bus ride from the airport was kind of incredible.

It was a lot like driving in Greece, honestly. We were in this massive bus hurtling along cliffsides, past other cars and wedged up in between a rock and a massive fall. It was terrifying, but also beautiful. Land like that can't help but be. And when we got close to Dubrovnik you could see the lights. I wish I had pictures, but there's no way I could have captured it. You could see from the lights, the way they curved that the shape of the land was that lovely mediterranean mountain terrain and when you caught it just right you could see the moon over the water and it's the kind of place you just feel in the air that it is beautiful.

Then we finally got to the Dubrovnik. And there really aren't words to describe what that was like. Old Town Dubrovnik is a walled city and at night they are all lit up, so we went right beside them in the bus, between the wall and the cliff and I felt miniscule. The walls are massive and standing beside them is humbling and breath-taking, and feels a little bit like you're going to die.

But we didn't, obviously, and we got off the bus, and I went to my hostel, which was lovely. It was almost 11:30 at this point, so it was a little scary walking around by myself, and therefore I didn't take a lot of pictures, but even so the city is beautiful at night.

It's all tiny alleys and streets and stairs (actually, the old town is pedestrian-only, which is part of why I had to walk to the hostel) and all in that beautiful Mediterranean shade of gold that cities turn after dark. But I got to the hostel without too much trouble, checked in, and walked down to a different part of the city with one of the hostel employees, since there are two different locations where the hostel has rooms. It turned out that the employee was French, so we got to speak French on the way down, and it was a nice chat. We complained about Parisians and talked about travel and it's always interesting to see who you meet on these kinds of adventures.

The adventure continued in my hostel room, which I share with a guy from Australia and two Swiss girls from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. They are a lot of fun, and even that late at night we had a good time talking and joking. It also turns out the Aussie is the only one in the room who doesn't speak French, so the Swiss girls had a really fun time with that. But cool roommates aside, I was pretty tired, so I showered and went to bed, ready to get out and explore the city the next day!

The thing about travel days is that they aren't usually a lot of fun. It's a lot of hurry up and wait and airports and recycled air and sitting and subpar but very expensive food. And when you travel a lot, I feel like it's really easy to get caught up in the minutia of the travel day (which is important. Travel minutia is VERY important. Don't get me wrong.), but you kind of forget the joy and wonder of travel. I mean, it'd been a long day, but I got to Dubrovnik and looked up at the walls and felt the atmosphere and the beauty and amazement of a new place, and it was really good after so much time in airports to get such a visceral reminder of why I travel. I didn't drag myself across an ocean and then two days later across a continent to sit in airports or read She-Hulk (awesome though she may be). I do it for the feeling you get when you walk around a centuries-old walled city in the middle of the night, or taste a real, original Irish Guinness, or get to use that French that you've worked so hard for, or just appreciate the beauty and the wonder and the newness of a place you've never been before.