By Josie Brackey, Senior Real Estate major,
and Tiffiany Winkowitsch, Senior Marketing major
We finished our last day in Dublin today and ventured off in the morning to tour the Guinness Brewery. Upon arrival at the brewery, the group got a brief introduction to the history of the factory. The lease is on the ground level, displayed within the floor and was signed in 1759. It is a 9000-year lease with unlimited access to the river water within the city. The tour explained the process that goes into creating Guinness beer and had many videos of people explaining it in detail and interesting facts of about the company.
After the brewing process was explained, students had the option to become certified as an official Guinness pint pourer from the Guinness Academy. There is a special way of how a Guinness should be poured because of the way that the beer is made. Carbon dioxide gas goes down and the nitrogen goes up, which is how the thick foamy head gets created. A perfect pint has approximately one inch of foam on the top of the beer and is topped off to the brim.
The tour concluded at the Gravity Bar, overlooking the whole city of Dublin, which was a lot of the students’ favorite part. Each student received a free Guinness beer at the Gravity Bar, which ended in Eric getting about five since Guinness isn’t a drink of choice for most in our group. Another favorite was the gift shop on the ground floor. A lot of students ended up walking out with at least one souvenir.
Before heading to Galway, we stopped at Phoenix Park and got to see this ginormous cross that the Pope has been to. The students might have been more interested in the ice cream truck instead of the cross. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize Eric was going to get free ice cream since his last name is O’Brien and so was the name of the ice cream truck. Everyone around him also got free ice cream, but Paula was the only fortunate one in the group. After arriving in Galway and getting settled into our hostel, students enjoyed browsing around the Galway ped mall. This mall consists of multiple shops, restaurants, and pubs. The ped mall was a popular place to be tonight since the Ireland soccer team was playing Sweden. Students enjoyed the opportunity to grab some food, shop and soak up the culture as the teams were competing.
