Off the waterway topic, but you'll see the link back to guinness canal boats.

Couple of weeks ago we pretended we were foreigners in our own city. Jeepers every we first visitied cities like London, Paris, Rome, etc, we always enjoyed doing all the touristy stuff in these cities, but never at home. Here we just scoul in traffic as we commute or work in the city, passing within meters of things we don't even know exist on a daily basis as we're busy in our fair city.

We went into town early, had a cooked breakie, and then bought a "hop on hop off" open top dublin bus ticket and enjoyed a fab day visiting attractions and sites we'd been blind too as they were on our own doorstep. The Guinness tour was truely amazing and to do it justice needs 2.5 hours to enjoy it. 7th floor 360 panoramic views of the city afterwards and complementary black stuff. There was a great section on the guinness ships and canal boats, and amazing section and video of coopers making the 1000 wooden barrells a week, some of which went down with 45M off parker point in 1946, but were recovered when she was refloated in the late 1980s. Other things we visited included Christ church, the crypt, Dubhlinia, Docklands, Phoenix Park, Dublin Castle, The Chester Beattie Library, etc. Had an amazing day for buttons and the open top bus drivers are fab "dub" comedians. Bout time we enjoyed some of the hidden treasures of our city if we can change our glasses from commuter mode to tourist mode. Anyway that's enough red herring and side track from more important things like rafting, pwcs and pumpouts that we now know don't work anywhere in europe either It's a great little city looked through different eyes.

Cheers

Touristey Froggie

45M raised in the late 80's ??. I would have sworn there were some barrels
and barrel ends(otherwise known as breadboards) auctioned in the '75 rally
!. Maybe these were from an earlier attempt to raise her.
Maybe someone can clarify this ?