Our visit is drawing to a close and we're capping it off with a pint and another opportunity for the firing squad at Ryan's Pub just down the street from our hotel.  This is a comfortable neighborhood pub, filled with the smell of hops and old wood and the murmur of lively conversation.  If this were closer to my home, it would be my pub of choice. 

It's also a famous pub on two accounts.  Mainly, it boasts at being the closest pub to the Guinness Brewery and, secondly, it has been visited by two American Presidents, Reagan and Clinton.  To their credit, I didn't see a "Ronnie Drank Here" or "Clinton Pulled Here" plaque anywhere.  Maybe they didn't realize they could bring in a few euros with that sort of advertising, or maybe they're simply embarrassed about it. 

We had dinner at The Boxty House where they serve, oddly enough, Boxty's, which are potato pancakes filled with meat or vegetarian mixtures.  It was a lively place, filled with clueless American tourists ("Are the Fish and Chips part fried or totally fried?") and gangs of Englishmen with broad shoulders and no necks, in town for the big rugby match on Sunday.  Apparently the pre-game warm-up is going to be a long one. 

After dinner and a final wander about Temple Bar, we headed back toward the hotel.

Being on the opposite side of the Liffey from our previous attempt, we had another go at a walk near the river.  It was a beautiful, clear, mild night and the river was thankfully at high tide (when the tide it out, the locals refer to the resulting sluggish trickle as "The Sniffy Liffey").  If you could ignore the lorries rumbling past, the flying grit, the diesel fumes and the mini race-riot we had to walk through, it wasn't an unpleasant experience.