Guinness

Today's "business" visit was at Guinness brewery. I used quotation marks because the point of these business visits was to answer the question "Why Ireland" for a paper the students are going to write for the International Trip Class (You know, the whole reason we are here.) I think "Why Ireland" is not going to be answered by having a tour guide give us the standard tourist tour around the brewery. Plus, it is a stupid question for Guinness anyway. The founder was a Dubliner and Irish people like to drink. End of reason.
The tour was actually interesting (in a tourist sense, not a business sense). The building is set up for these tours and is quite well done. Better than some of the museums we have seen. There was a fun section to see all the commercials they have done as well as an advertising section displaying some of the promotions they had done. My favorite was the idea to put 50,000 Guinness bottles into the ocean with notes to see how many turn up. There are still some turning up on beaches even today.
The tour concludes with a free pint of Guinness on top of their building in the "gravity bar". As 50% of those on the trip are tea-toting, this was a place we got a lot of strange looks sipping on our cokes and sparkling waters. The view from this area was a 360 degree view of Dublin. It was the first chance to get up high and see all over the city and it was quite lovely. I loved the motto they had painted on one of the rafters "On March 17th, everyone's Irish". I bet that is like Christmas day for an (actually, THE) Irish Brewer.