Day 2: Beyonce, a pint and a really big shoe

Duh moment of our first full day in Dublin: Halfway around the world, there's no escape from stateside pop culture. A full-page newspaper ad for Beyonce's show early next year. A poster slapped up near St. Patrick's Cathedral featuring the cardinal of country crooners, Kenny Rogers. And more pubs with awnings touting Budweiser than Guinness.

Speaking of the brown stuff, we sipped a bit at the legendary Guinness Storehouse, billed as Dublin's most popular tourist attraction. Inside its dull factory facade is a sparkling, high-tech tourist trap -- and one that hasn't produced a drop of stout since sometime in the '80s. Pretty much a waste of 14 Euros apiece, 'cept for the free pint, the exhibit of Guinness advertising through the ages and the sparkling view from its seventh-floor Gravity Bar.

Followed that up by staggering through the beautiful St. Stephen's Green, a park with the most verdant lawns this side of St. Andrew's. And then a quick spin through the National Museum revealed the completely bizarre "relic of St. Brigid's shoe": a wee, but highly hyped, metal casing that the original probably decomposed in.

Centuries from now, think they'll be venerating the "relic of touron Rick's pint glass"?