I'm celebrating National Beer Day by reminiscing about drinking Guinness at the brewery in Dublin, Ireland.
I'm shocked to realize that it has been almost 30 years since I was in Dublin. How did that much time go by?
But that's how long it has been. In 1996, I managed to wrangle Gaming Guests of Honor invitations for GaelCon, the national Irish gaming convention, for myself and one of my best friends, Chris Williams.
While both Chris and I had been working in the adventure game industry for several years, neither of us was of the stature of the big names. I knew that, so I worked a different angle to nail down those invitations. I submitted our gaming resumes and asked if we were going to be in the United Kingdom already, perhaps the convention would consider flying us over from London. And our resumes were definitely good enough to carry that.
So we flew into Gatwick, got through customs, and trundled immediately over to the gate where we boarded our Ryanair flight to Dublin. Even now, my strongest memory of that flight is the one flight attendant who was very, very tall, but the flight attendant jumpseats were very, very close to the deck. That poor girl had to fold her legs totally under the seat, and she looked so uncomfortable.
I don't really remember the details of our arrival in Dublin. I think we were picked up at the airport? We somehow arrived at the bed and breakfast that was to be our home base for the next week and a half. They had incredibly good, homestyle food, and we loved eating there. That was the first time I ever had milk that still had the cream on top. Heaven!
The first several days were spent attending the convention, and we had a great time. John Tynes was the major guest of honor, and I vaguely recall something about him having to shave his head because he didn't remember to bring Hamish back to Ireland with him.
After the convention was over, we spent a few more days in Dublin being tourists and sightseeing. And one of the things we did was visit the Guinness brewery at St. James's Gate to take the tour.
I have been a fan of Guinness for many years. I like my beer dark and chewy, and Guinness is the epitome of that. So I had been looking forward to the tour since we arrived.
When we bought our tickets and checked in, we also received two coupons, each good for a half-pint of Guinness after the tour.
At this point I unfortunately don't remember the details of the tour, but I recall that it was interesting and had a good amount of history about the making of stout in general and about Guinness in particular.
I do remember that at the end of the tour everyone was pointed toward the tasting room and given instructions on how to redeem our coupons.
As I mentioned, I like Guinness, so I quickly gave both of my coupons for a full pint.
Chris, on the other hand, redeemed only one coupon and got a half-pint.
We sat down and I happily started drinking my Guinness. Yum! I decided that it really does taste better in Dublin. Now that I think about it, that is one thing I remember from the tour: We were told that the reason it tastes better in Dublin is because the water comes from the River Liffey. I'm willing to concede that's the case.
Chris, however, took two sips from his glass, pushed it away, and said, "I don't like it."
Shocked, shocked I was! And I said, "What do you mean, you don't like it?"
"I just don't like it."
There's no accounting for taste. But I wasn't going to let that good stout go to waste. I took his glass and finished that along with mine.
The ironic thing is that after we returned to the United States, he started drinking Scotch. I guess there really is no accounting for taste.
Image by Aneil Lutchman and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
