Orlando Day 4

This morning was the first day for the official trading for the Canvention. I had an early start to the day preparing my boxes of trading items that I had posted over to here before I had left Australia.

After some breakfast Adam and I headed over to the Convention Centre for the 9.00am start. There are over 450 people registered to attend the trading floor.

I was the end table on the row I was situated in so there is plenty of room to spread out my traders. As I was unpacking my cans I had another person come over to look what I was unpacking. He is a collector of old steel beer cans and also was looking for any Guinness cans from obscure countries that you would not think of as brewers of Guinness in beer cans, for example, Togo.

Unfortunately I did not have any he required and even worse news is that some of the cans that I had packed had been dented during postage. I was able to push out some of the minor dents but a few cans were no good. After setting up my table ready for trading I went straight to the shop that is set up for the Canvention and bought the commemorative shirt and a few other items.

It was then time to start walking the floor of the trading room searching for items to add to my collection. All over the room people were setting up their displays and I had a quick scout around all the tables trying to find Guinness items that I might need. Early on I was able to find quite a few beer coasters, both Guinness and some international Fosters coasters. Later one person had a group of Guinness cans for disposal and I was able to pick up 4 that I did not have.

The varying displays on the tables were quite interesting to view. A lot of the displays did not have any cans at all; this is a lot more evident here than with Australian collectors. With some people tending to specialise in a particular product i.e. beer trays, glasses, paper advertising, tap knobs, bottle tops, aluminium bottles etc.

As the day wore on I had gone twice around the displays and picked up a lot of coasters and bottle tops but had not found any more cans to add to the collection.

A lot of people are not able to attend the Canvention for the full three games and some arrived either later in the day or will not be arriving until Friday due to either work commitments or they were still travelling to the show.

A few people had shown interest in the cans I had on display and I was able to do some swaps with other people and sell a couple of items to others. I also arranged with Adam to head back to the reception building to go to the Deli and arrange for some lunch.

Later I was able to get some additional Guinness items including a couple of bottle tops and a Guinness neon light. Brewery collectable dealers are allowed to sell at this show and one person had 8 tables set up with all beer cans to sell to people.

It is very interesting introducing yourself to people, when you say you are from Sydney, Australia, nearly everyone wants to talk to you to listen to your accent, so you end up talking to them for 10 minutes and then have to excuse yourself so you can get moving to look at the next display. Also every second person either knows someone in Australia (my daughter / son / cousin / friend) or they have been to Australia at some time. Everyone loves “Aussies” and we have been trying to encourage them all to come to Australia for a holiday and include a trade meeting or if possible a Canathon, which we keep telling them about.

During the afternoon the BCCA has a board of directors meeting which any member is allowed to attend to be an observer. Myself, Bob and Barry went to the board meeting and it was a long very formal meeting. They had a break during the meeting after an hour and a half and were still in the meeting when I had to leave to attend another meeting for a the One Can / One Country chapter of the BCCA. This group I have been a member of since I joined the BCCA. It is a world wide chapter where you set aside a section of your collection to include one can from each country. Some people in this group have up to 180 different countries in this category. I only have about 85, so I have a lot of catching up to do. The meeting is quick but you have a good chance to win a lucky door prize and I was lucky enough to win a Kaliber can from Belfast, Northern Ireland. (and I mean lucky because Kaliber is brewed by Guinness)

After attending the OC/OC meeting trading for the day had finished so we went back across to the main section of the resort to the bar and had a few drinks and some dinner.

At 8.00 it was time for a hospitality night where the organising chapters for the Canvention had arranged for local micro-breweries to supply (free of charge) their different types of brews. Five local breweries provided 15 different brews for everyone to try. In the mean time I continue to purchase bottles of water to drink!!

Also provided was a range of merchandise from some of the breweries for everyone to buy plus coasters, badges etc so I was able to pick something up from the night. This night went till about 1am so it was very enjoyable to meet a lot of the people and just chat without needing to talk about beer collecting.

I was that busy trying to trade all day that I did not even take my Camera out of my backpack so I will need to get cracking with some photos tomorrow.

Orlando Day 3

This morning we experimented with having breakfast at Ponderosa a steakhouse which is a $4.99 all you can eat breakfast. The building is across the roadway from the resort. They have all the normal breakfast cereals, porridge, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, fruit etc, but most of it is mass produced and very plain food. After breakfast Adam and I went straight to the supermarket next door and purchased some breakfast cereal for the rest of our stay in Orlando.

Next we went to the convention centre of the resort to pick up our parcels we posted with our beer trading items in them and took them back to the room. I then did some work on the blog. I have found that I am not getting enough time to post all the photos onto the Flickr photo web page but will try to catch up with that after I get through Las Vegas and things settle down a bit.

Next five of us caught a taxi to the local Walmart store. This is the largest supermarket chain in USA. Think of it as a Woolworths, Big W, Kmart, Bunnings all put together. I do not think it would be possible to not be able to get anything you wanted in this shop.
I was able to buy another 10 different tubes of Pringles,

some Guinness bottles and a new shirt. We spent about an hour in the store and then went back to the resort. Grabbing a few sandwiches for lunch and then sitting in the shade near the huge pool for a few hours.

After this I started walking from room to room looking at the various peoples trading items they had set up for people to look at. One person had for sale two mint condition Guinness American cans from the early 1960’s. There are 18 different variations of this can known and the two he had were amongst the rarest of them. I nearly choked when I saw the price of them $1,800 US each. Needless to say I did not purchase them.

I went room to room for just on four hours and spent the entire time on Level 10 of the tower. I did not even get a chance to get to any of the other 9 floors. I was able to pick up a couple of Guinness cans and a lot of coasters and a few other Guinness badges and table stands.

At 7.00pm the entire Australian contingent met for a drink at the central bar in the reception building and we took a group photo.

We then headed off to a gathering put on by Joe Germino, who is the President of the BCCA. He entertained about 50 people in his villa for dinner.

After this I again went room to room and managed to get through floors 9, 8 and 7 before heading off to bed at 1.30am. I was able to pick up a lot of coasters and a few beer bottle tops during the night.

Tomorrow is the start of the main trading in the huge conference centre so it will be a very busy day.

Orlando Day 2

This morning I went to Disney Epcot, one of the Disney parks right near where we are staying. Epcot is a two theme park. Ray and I took a free shuttle bus this is provided by our resort at 9.00am. The trip went via Disney World first to drop off people and then onto Epcot.

On arrival you need to walk about 15 minutes to get to the entry from the shuttle drop off point. The area for car parking is enormous. On entry you go into the area which is called Future World. There are nine areas in Future World including Space Ship Earth, Universe of Energy, Mission Space, Innovations, Imagination etc. In each area there is either a ride through different sections each which provide commentary on the particular scene you have in front of you or there is a theatre where you watch a short documentary on the theme of the display.

They were quite good, possibly the best of these was a 3D display in the Imagination section called ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Audience’ based on the movie ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Kids’. The 3D was really good, really putting the items right into your face plus using vibrating seats, wind generators and water sprays to make you feel the show.

There was of course thousands of people in the park and a lot of wheelchairs ans strollers are hired out during the day. At the side of each exibit is a car park for strollers.

After this was the second themed area called World Showcase featuring the countries, Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan, Morocco, France, U.K. and Canada. It was similar to the Expo that was in Brisbane in 1988. You would go from one exhibit to the other and like the previous you would get either a documentary or a ride with various scenes to go through.

We were there till 7.00pm and still did not get through all the exhibits. By this time the heat and humidity which we had been walking through all day finally caught up with us and we caught the shuttle back to the resort.

Tonight was the same as yesterday with room to room trading but there was a lot more rooms open on a lot of the floors.

One of the local breweries has provided free kegs of beer for drinking by the Canvention participants and the keg was set up in the room of one of the former Presidents of the BCCA. I therefore had already got plenty of bottles of water in the fridge and just kept going back to my room to get another bottle as I needed it.

I met up with some people who have been to Australia to one of our meetings and also of course a lot of collectors for the first time. I also met my friend Steen from Denmark who is here for the Canvention. Steen is a beer coaster collector who has been to Sydney many times and I look after him with transport and trading when he is in Sydney. He will be coming to Sydney to our Coaster Convention which is on the first weekend of October. I had been picking up coasters for Steen on my travels and he was very surprised with the amount of new coasters I had been able to pick up in my four weeks away.



Next Adam Murphy from Newcastle arrived. I am sharing a suite with Adam and we went and got some diner and caught up with each other. Following was some more walking the floors of the Tower meeting more people and picking up some more items for my collection.


Once again it was way past midnight before I was able to get away and headed back to the room to sleep.

Orlando Day 1

Woke up to a sunny day and luckily my room is on the opposite side of the building to the morning sun. All us Beer Convention people are staying in Tower One which is 10 floors with 50 rooms on each floor. Each tower has a concierge in the tower lobby which is on top of the reception in the resort lobby. I will post a few photos of the resort in a few days time when I get a chance to walk around a bit.

Caught up with Barry and Leanne and headed to the local 7-11 store which is only about 300 yards from our hotel. We checked out the food situation and got some tubs of cereal to have for breakfast back at our rooms. We then arranged to meet at 10.00am.

I had read on the net before leaving home that there was a bus called the I-Ride which went from the Orlando Premium Centre (a huge factory outlet for all the top clothing brands) to downtown Orlando. I had spoken to our tower concierge and had arranged for a taxi to come to take us there. It was a 12 dollar cab ride which was quite good.

We then went to find the I-Ride bus which was three dollars for unlimited rides all day on that bus. I was boiling hot with very high humidity and we found a shady spot to stand to wait for the bus. I was reading the bus route as the bus turned up and we were waiting to board. At that exact moment I read that the bus only went from one factory outlet to another one closer to downtown and told everyone to not board the bus. Just as this happened a bus went past that had Downtown Orlando written on its destination board. Of course it had gone past by the time I realised what it was.

Leanne, Barry and Ray waiting for the bus in the shade.

We then had to wait about 15 minutes for the next downtown bus to come along. When we went to get on the driver told us that the all day fare for the whole bus network was $4 so we all purchased tickets. Once we had purchased the tickets the driver said “where are you going” we replied we were going to downtown Orlando and the driver was very surprised saying ‘’ why would you want to go there, where is nothing to see”. Anyway we caught the bus anyway and it took us along International Drive which is a very long road lined with motels, mini golf courses, water slide parks, shopping centres etc, completely set up for the tourists.

After that the bus set off into some local suburban areas closer to the centre of Orlando. Well what a difference. It was like going on a set of CSI Miami into the poor areas. Small houses made of concrete blocks, just flat walls, no features to them, set right on the footpath, not painted but looking about 30 years old. Most houses had a few people sitting in plastic chairs out the front of them at 11am just staring blankly out at the world. Near parks and underpasses there were groups of men just standing around doing nothing wasting their lives! When we got to the central bus terminal we were right on the side of the city area which were just large skyscrapers but looking at the locality map it showed no landmarks that looked interesting so we decided to head back out of the city. Ray suggested we go to a place called Florida Mall which is a large shopping mall like we have in Australia, with all the large department stores and smaller specialty shops.

We checked that we could get a bus from Florida Mall back to the Orlando Premium Centre later so we were close to the hotel. We could so off we went. The bus routes are well marked and there are plenty of route maps available on the buses that help you plan your trip. The buses have a rack on the front of them that you can put your pushbike onto when you travel.

Also we passed a gas station and the shop was called Kangaroo Express
In the land of the free .... and McDonalds
At Florida Mall we firstly got some lunch then set out shopping. Ray bought some playing cards and I got a Guinness White Ball for a pool table. We then went into this giant M&M’s store which was at the end of the mall. As I collect M&M’s I had a ball getting some large figures and also some smaller key rings and other souvenirs.

My toy shop - KB Toys
We then got another bus back to the Orlando Premium Outlet where we also went shopping, I got a tee shirt and Barry got some shirts from the Nike store. From there we got a taxi back to the motel. I went to the bar to get a drink and sit and watch some baseball and Brian & Rhonda from Port Macquarie had arrived. We sat and caught up on our travels as they had been away for 2 weeks travelling in New York and surrounding areas in a hire car.

When Barry & Leanne came back up with Ray we decided to go to a Chinese Buffet restaurant which was across the road from the resort for dinner. The food was o.k. as you would expect from a buffet. Then we came back to the tower block and people had had already set the rooms up for night trading. What you do if you want is prop open the door of your room (wooden door stops are specially supplied) and people walk the corridors and come into the room to look at your trading gear and either trade or buy the items. Otherwise you just go around and walk into the rooms and meet the other collectors. Tonight (Monday) there were only five rooms open but tomorrow night there will be plenty of rooms open as people start to arrive for Thursday’s opening.


During the night I managed to pick up some coke cans for people back home but also met about 40 collectors.

After that I went back to the bar to get a drink before heading off to bed and while I was there Bob and his wife Cia from Adelaide arrived at the resort. I showed them to their room and showed them the lay of the land and then we went for a drink.

The resort has a 24 hour deli where you can get all types of food, Breakfast cereal, fruit, salads, hot meals, pizza’s and beer, wine etc. While we were having a drink two more of our group showed up. Doug & Keith T from Sydney arrived having had some delays in their internal flights in the USA. After we finished our drink we showed Doug & Keith T to their rooms and then I went to bed as it was by then about 1.30am.

On To The USA

This morning I got up early and shuffled around the luggage I had as the case felt real heavy when I picked it up. I said goodbye to Janette, then Stewart drove me to Gatwick Airport and on the way Jeanette rang to inform me that Great Britain (remember them, they are four countries) had just overtaken us in the medal count. So they should by the way, they have more than 4 times the population than us.

It is raining here which is a pity after such a sunny day yesterday. Stewart & Jeanette are going to a huge street party in the Mall in London to celebrate the closing ceremony and the fact that London will be hosting the next Olympic Games in 2012. So I hope it fines up for them otherwise the world will see a typical English Summer day when the cross to them from the Olympic Closing Ceremony.

It was great catching up with Stewart and Jeanette and I can’t thank them enough for looking after me for the time I spent with them, showing me around and putting up with me was fantastic of them.

We got to the airport in plenty of time and after saying goodbye to Stewart I went in and got my boarding pass. I got through the baggage check in alright. My swapping of luggage did the trip as I am allowed 23kg on this flight and I had 23.1kg in my suitcase. As for my carry one case and laptop bag I can only guess that there would be at least another 12kg in them, plus the two heavy jackets I am wearing.

I typed the above while waiting in the departure lounge at Gatwick airport and am not going to finish it 48 hours later in my room in Orlando.

I had to wait about 1 and a half hours for the boarding time for the plane and once onboard found that I had three seats to myself on the plane, so my good luck with seating on long flights continues.

The plane flight was quite good and after 7 hours flying we touched down in Orlando. You get off the plane and firstly go through immigration where I handed over my passport and White immigration card (remembering back to the start of the blog I mentioned I had to get a visa for entry into the USA well for the visa waiver program people fill in a green immigration card and I with a visa had to fill in the white one). The immigration official saw the white card and immediately went searching through my passport for the US visa. He looked at it to see it was current and then asked me “why do you need a visa to enter the USA” (at this point I thought I was going to get given a through inquiry) I replied because the lady I had spoken to at the US consulate in Sydney, Australia told me I needed one because of my conviction for a single drink driving offence in 1990.

With that he just stamped my passport and handed it back and said have a great trip in the US. So I thought that was great. Next I had pick up my luggage and then go through the customs section, where the person who’s counter I went to looked at the customs declaration I had filled in and said that he could see I had been to other countries first (Singapore, England & Ireland) and asked how long I had been travelling. I replied that I had been away 4 weeks and then he asked where I was staying in Orlando and how long I was staying here. I gave him the address and said 10 days, he then asked if I was going anywhere else in the USA and I replied Las Vegas and driving 5 days in California before going home to Australia. He handed back my paperwork and said to me “Wow, you are having a great trip. I hope you enjoy your stay”.

With that I was through into the border control and in the USA for the first time. I had to get a light rail train to the main terminal building and then go down to the terminal entry to get the Shuttle to the hotel. With the convention we had a special deal we could use with a shuttle bus service and I found them and climbed aboard the shuttle bus. I was the only person on it when he closed the doors and I thought that it would be a good trip going straight to the hotel.

Unfortunately he went further down the terminal and stopped at another pick up point where 6 more people got on. Finally we were away. But the driver just did a loop of the roadway and came back to where I had boarded and picked up someone else.

We were then on our way and luckily for me I was the first stop, so from the time I landed to the time I got to the hotel was only about 70 minutes.

I checked into the hotel and went to my room which is on the fifth floor of tower block 1 in the resort. The room has a general entry area which is as big as a lounge room with a three seater lounge, a single lounge chair, cable TV, microwave and a fridge. After checking out the main area of the resort I went out the side entry and crossed the 6 lanes of traffic to get to a convenience store called CVS. There I purchased a 24 pack of water, some tubes of Pringles and got a 12 pack of Beer to put in the fridge for my roommate Adam for when he arrives on Tuesday night.

I then went back to the main building where I ran into Ray Everingham, from Melbourne who had just arrived. By the time he got settled it was dinner time and this resort had 5 eating outlets to choose from if you do not want to go outside the resort. We went to the resorts 24 hour deli and chose to have a pizza each. They are a 12 inch pizza and cost 9.99 for the base and then 99 cents for every topping you put on it. So with four toppings it cost me 13.99 for the pizza. For the record it was delicious.

While we were eating them, we met our first fellow beer can collectors who were here for the convention. We chatted with them and during this time in walked in the BCCA president Joe Germino, who I knew because he came to our annual Canathon in Adelaide last January. While we were talking to him another few members walked up and we ended up in one of the bars talking beer collecting for a few hours.

Later that night Barry Rhall and Leanne, who are my good friends from Panania, in Sydney arrived and we had a good catch up on our travels, as they left Sydney the day after I did and had travelled to San Francisco, New York, Niagara Falls and also did a bus tour around North East USA and Canada with 48 other people they only met for the first time when they got on the bus.

By this time it was after midnight, which in fact was 5am in London where I had got up 23 hours before. So it was a good time to get some sleep and I went off to my room and did just that.

Collecting:

Milwalke Best Beer Can - 3 photos of same can
Coke Olympic Cans - Zero & Classic
Pringles Tubes -Regular Size Grab and Go Size

Last Full Day In London

Stewart and Jeanette had a big day planned for me for my last full day in England. Firstly Stewart had a chauffeur job to pick someone up and then take them to Heathrow Airport. So he dropped Jeanette and myself off at a tube station and then went and did his job. Jeanette and I caught the tube to the stop before Heathrow and when Stewart completed his drop off he drove to meet us there and we went off to Penton Hook Marina at Chertsey, where we boarded Stewart & Jeanette’s boat and we took off for a day’s boating on the Thames.

We were heading for Windsor which is up river from Chertsey. On the journey which took about three hours we had to pass through five canal locks. These are used to regulate the height of the river and to control the changes in the tidal differences on the Thames.


At each one of these Jeanette and myself had to tie off the boat to the lock side and then either take in the slack of the ropes or gradually release the ropes as we either raised or lowered inside the lock.

All along the river were homes with private mooring spots in front of them.


A thatched cottage with mooring up for sale....

In other spots there were public mooring spots at park lands and near town centres, pubs or shops.

At various places along the river were pathways with a lot of people, walking, cycling, running, feeding ducks etc and plenty of people who moored their boats and were having picnics on the riverbanks.
As we got closer to Windsor we came up to an area of crown land which is part of the Queen’s estate at Windsor Castle.

Windsor Castle with Eton School Rugby Grounds in the foreground

Arriving at Windsor village the place was packed with people and we had to firstly find a place to moor the boat and then walk a while to get to the place where you were required to pay 4 pound for a 24 hour mooring permit.Today there was a horse race meeting at Windsor racecourse and a lot of the people going to the races come to Windsor and catch a cruise up river to the racecourse. We had good lunch at a local hotel and then walked along the river bank back to where we had moored the boat.

From the river you can see Windsor Castle

The return trip took the roughly the same length of time except at one stage we had to help out a small boat whose outboard motor had stopped and they had drifted into the riverbank on a small island and were stuck. We pulled them out from the island and Stewart was able to help them get the motor going again to which they were very grateful.

A steam driven boat

We returned to the marina about 6.30pm and whilst we were driving back to Stewart and Jeanette’s, (as it had been a long exhausting day being a deck hand!!) I had a quick lap in the back of the car.

When we got home I had to repack my luggage for tomorrow’s travel to Orlando and then fill in the forms for the tea chest I am having sent home by a company who arranges to forward boxes of unaccompanied personal belongings via sea mail. Then I edited my photos from today and looked at some emails and answered them before heading off to bed.

I do not know what access I will have to the Internet when I get to Orlando but I hope I will be able to get Wi-Fi access at the resort I will be staying at. So therefore I should be able to keep posting these notes daily. That's all from London.

London Again

This morning Stewart took me to the local shops and I got a small box from the post office so I could post some parcels off to some collecting friends. Stewart had some business to do so I took the opportunity to also go and get haircut and then went off to Sainsbury’s to do some shopping. I was able to purchase some Pringles cans and also some Guinness cans.

Going back home to change cars as Stewart had to get a a road worthy certificate for the other car. While that was getting done we went to the local Marks & Spencers for lunch. Marks & Spencers supermarket section is an own brand only market. But they still have every food item you could want. They have a lot of items to take home ready made just to reheat. They have a deal where you can get for 10 pound, two main meals of your choice plus salads, two deserts and a bottle of wine.

After lunch we went to buy some large boxes for me to pack my items I want to send home by sea freight. Then I packed up the smaller package I wanted to send today and then went to the post office and posted it. Coming home I packed the box for freight but got 90% I wanted to send into one box. This is good as it will cost less money. The other 10% is mainly empty Pringles cans so they can be packed into smaller boxes and sent via normal mail.

After dinner I finally mended my original suitcase. I used the new solid plastic one when I went to Dublin and it was o.k. but I still do not like that it is heavier that the original one so I will leave the new one here in England and carry on with the original one. So now I have to change everything back over before Sunday morning when I leave for Orlando.

Back To London

My time in Dublin has come to an end and I am going back to London for a few days before heading off on the next part of my journey.

I had a late night finalising my luggage for today and I had also been replying to some emails that needed doing and also finding out some information about the weather in Florida as there has been some wild storms and cyclonic winds within about 200 miles of where I will be going on Sunday. I also decided to pay my account before I went to bed in case there were other people trying to checkout at the same time in the morning. I finally got to the concierge to pay my account at 2.05am and then went straight off to sleep.

I was up, showered and out the door by 7.05 and had to walk to the other end of Temple Bar wheeling my suitcase and carrying my by now very heavy carry-on bag for the plane. I waited about 15 minutes before the Aircoach (special airport coach) came along and I were off to the airport. I had plenty of time to sit and have some breakfast while watching some more Olympics on the T.V. I then went to the check-in to get my suitcase loaded and it weighed in at 24.6kg. I knew it was going to be way over the 15kg limit so I had packed a big cardboard shop bag full of bits and pieces and after I had taken that out of the suitcase I got the weight down to 17.2kg and the attendant was O.K. with that.

I went through the customs and walked the 15 minutes it took to get to the gate my plane was leaving from. Not long after I got there an announcement came through that my plane was going to by half an hour late. I had a good book to read so I did not mind. Well the 30 minutes came and went and we were still sitting at the gate with no plane in sight. Finally it came and there was a mad hurry to get everybody onto the plane and get it in the air. It finally left about 1 hour 15 minutes late.

Stewart was waiting for me when I got to Gatwick and we went home. I spent most of the afternoon doing some washing and on the computer trying to arrange a freight company to arrange to get me some boxes sent home. Because I have not left myself enough time to get the boxes delivered in time to get them packed before I leave on Sunday. In the end I am going to get some boxes myself and will then get the company to pick them up from Stewart’s after I have gone.

Stewart, Jeanette and I went out to a restaurant called Frankie and Benny’s for dinner. It is based on a 1920’s American style diner which would have been run by an Italian family. The food was quite good and cheap compared to some of the places I have eaten at while I have been away. After dinner we came back home and watched T.V. for a while before getting an early night.

Dublin Day 6

The forecast is for a dry day so I hope that is true as it has rained for some part of every day since I arrived.

I had to post the parcel I had made up last night, so I hailed a taxi and got him to drive to the main post office on the other side of the Liffey in O'Connel Street. The parcel weighed 17.8kg. I was lucky I had gone to an ATM before I got the taxi as the post office do not take credit cards! The cost of posting is quite close to the VAT refund I will get when I leave the country so that worked out well.

From there I walked through the shopping area
and bought a few Guinness items at Guinness store which is in the centre of town. They had a few things that you can not get at the brewery.


From there I walked back to the hotel to drop off the shopping via Temple Bar and took some photos of the pubs during the day.





I had arranged to go to the Archive Room again at the Guinness Storehouse but as there was an in-house event on during the morning I was told that it would not be available until 1pm, so I had some time to spare.

I knew that Guinness used to ship their barrels along the Liffey by Barge and use the canal ways to transport the beer around Ireland in the late 1800's until the 1960's. So I went for a walk along the river towards the Guinness Storehouse. I stopped at a couple of pubs along the way and also passed the wall of the old City of Dublin and went under the stone covered bridge between the Christ Church Cathedral and another building which used to be the Church of Ireland Synod Hall.




Along either side of the river is one way for vehicles and there are quite a few bridges crossing the river at regular intervals. Some of them are old steel structures and others are more modern structures.



Further along I found the Guinness dispatch yard and got some photos of some of the Guinness vehicles entering and leaving the yard.





Just past here on the side road of this section of the brewery run the city tram which runs up Steven's Lane from the city centre and out to Tallaght in the south west suburbs. It is a modern tram system which looks very well patronised.

By this time it was 12.30 so I went to the Storehouse and had some lunch in the Cafe before going to the Archive room. I was there till it closed at 5pm and was still reading information about Guinness in Australia in the 1920's when it was time to go.

I went back to the hotel before going out for dinner and a final walk around Temple Bar before I heading back to write up this blog post.

Tomorrow I head back to London where I will be until Sunday when I leave for the Canvention in Orlando Florida.