Flour Power

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed how I like music covers. That’s why The King’s Head is probably my favourite pub in Galway on Mondays and Tuesdays. From 10pm to around midnight there’s usually a gig featuring two guys with acoustic guitars, playing covers of well-know songs.

Fred & James are one of the duos, playing Mondays, and their version of Galway Girl is the one I mentioned before, with the slightly altered lyrics. This time I managed to get a much better recording of it:

They also play this great version of Hotel California, ending with an awesome solo. Which I’ve been meaning to record for a long time now, and it’s finally here:

Enjoy the videos, and see you at The King’s Head one of these Mondays!

Guinness, the brand that is a synonym of “the black stuff”, is entering the black lager market with a new product – Guinness Black Lager.

Pitched at a younger market, the drink will be served up in 330ml bottles and supported by a new advertising and marketing campaign. It is being trialled in Northern Ireland and will go on sale at selected pubs and off-licences, priced similar to other premium lagers.

It seems like every once in a while Guinness tries to launch a crazy new product, and has failed consistently. Examples of such flops from Dublin’s legendary St James’ Gate brewery include “white Guinness” Breo and Guinness Light. But this time they’re confident this new product will be a success, maybe because of the growing popularity of dark lagers. John Kennedy, Diageo’s managing director, said the new beer had a unique taste which is “an evolution in lager making”.

With this lager, the master brewers of Guinness have built upon 250 years of rich brewing heritage to take lager enjoyment to a new level.

(via Independent.ie)

It’s now more than a month late, but I need to get this one out of the way: on the 15th of January, my Guinness counter hit number 500. It has come a long way since number one, when I first arrived to Ireland.

And since this was more than just another pint, I made sure I drank it in the same pub I had the first one in. And more: I was sitting at the same table. And this took place exactly (give or take a couple of hours) one year after Guinness Pint Number One. Historic, eh?!

“And now what?”, you might ask. Well, now I stop counting. It was fun as a topic of conversation, but the fun was gone when people insisted on telling me how much money I had spent on Guinness.

Now that I’m done with the counting, I also got rid of the counter in the sidebar. I just felt the need to point this out, otherwise people might think I stopped drinking Guinness altogether, which is not the case at all. Rest assured, Guinness people, I’ll keep sending money your way…

This Halloween, Galway’s streets will be taken over by fancy dress parties, traditional games, Trick or Treating, and a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance routine.

On Friday 30, the streets and pubs of the Latin Quarter will be the venue for a massive fancy dress party. And for those who like to compete, there are rumours that a €5000 prize will be awarded to the best costume will be prizes to the best costumes: 1st place €1000, 2nd place €500 and 3rd place €250.

Saturday 31 will have quite a few “Halloweeny” activities. In the afternoon: a kid’s fancy dress party where the costumes have to be environment friendly, and Trick or Treating and traditional games along the Latin Quarter streets. At 4pm comes the big event of the weekend – a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance routine and video in The Fishmarket at the Spanish Arch. The Galway Abooo Festival reaches its finale with the Saturday Night ‘Spooktacular Street Show’ – street performances will take place across the streets of the Latin Quarter from 8pm, leading to a display at 8.40pm at St. Nicholas’ Church.

To help bring as many people as possible to Galway, Irish Rail is providing a few “Ghost Trains” from Dublin at a special rate of €10.

More info can be found at the festival’s official page.

This all looks promising indeed.

2 months, 18 days, 5 hours and some minutes after I arrived in Galway, I drank my one hundreth pint of Guinness!

What? Don’t give me that look! It’s not like I was binge drinking a lot to get to that number. It’s just that Guinness goes down so easily that most of the nights out I get to number 4 without even noticing it. For me, it’s much easier to drink than the lager I always had before coming here, which is much more common in Portugal.

And the big One Oh Oh was drank on the 2nd of April, which is also my birthday. Makes it a historic pint, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not, but whatever. Here’s the (very artistic) photo of Pint Number 100:

I only regret not being able to keep Glass Number 100 (it was gone from the poor hiding place by the time I was on the way back home). It would go right next to Glass Number 50 and Glass Number 69 (yeah, I know… typical… but I had to keep it…).

Next milestone will happen in roughly 30 pints, but I’ll have to do some math to get the exact number