Guinness Storehouse
On our final day in Dublin, we had breakfast at the hotel and checked out. Our plan today was to drive into Dublin city.
Our first stop would be at the Guinness Storehouse on St. James Walk, where J. R. would celebrate Father's Day downing dark Irish beer. We toured the museum where they explained how Guinness was made and learned how to properly pour our own pint. We then got to drink Guinness on the top floor of the museum overlooking the city. We had lunch at the restaurant in the museum, which meant more Guinness for lunch.
Museum of Archaelogy
The night before, we had settled on the National Museum of Archaelogy as our final stop. Janie was interested in Celtic history and had hoped to stop at a dig site but the timing didn't work out so this was a chance to learn more about artifacts. It was hard to find parking nearby and bad GPS directions sent us in a few circles before we finally parked at St. Stephen's Green. After a convoluted walk due to more bad GPS directions, we found the museum. We spent about an hour touring before J. R. and Rebecca split off to go shopping. Rebecca wanted a Claddagh ring and had hoped to find one the day before but by the time we got to the store in Belfast it was closing. So they went off to find the ring while Alex and Janie toured the rest of the museum.
To The Airport
At 4PM as the museum closed, we walked back to our car and went to the airport. GPS failed us again as it took us awhile to get out of downtown Dublin and then the airport was even more of a disaster. There were no signs for rental car return except one well before the airport which was unclear due to it only listing certain cars. So we went past the main terminals and couldn't find where to return the car. J. R. finally found Avis on the GPS and it turns out the original sign was where we were supposed to return. Having finally dropped off the car, we found Ryan Air check-in and went through security. Security was very quick (except for Janie and Rebecca's bags being flagged for extra screening). We found some sandwiches at a small restauarant and bought some drinks and then boarded our flight to Edinburgh.
The Ryan Air flight was short and uneventful and our luggage arrived quickly at Edinburgh airport. The line for Hertz was not long, but took forever as the sole agent was very chatty and took 15 minutes to handle each person. We finally got our rental car (an automatic Mercedes) information and trudged with our luggage down the really, really, really long pathway to Hertz rental car. After a brief argument with the security guard who wouldn't let us pass because Janie's name wasn't on the contract (even though Chatty Agent had told us it would be, and putting her on the contract was the only reason we didn't use the Gold line), we were on our way to our hotel.