Flour Power

Last night Dave Matthews Band had their return to Ireland for a concert in The O2, 3 years after their last visit to Guinness-land. The show was opened by Alberta Cross who didn't really manage to warm the crowd up, and got me afraid we would have a below average concert. But slowly the venue got almost full and then Dave and his band, with all their experience in live performances, turned it into an excellent show.

Dave was very energetic as usual, and goofed around and danced throughout the whole gig, stealing some cheers from the crowd. The talk about getting drunk the night before (in a pub with live music and singing even without knowing the lyrics) probably wasn't just talk, and I bet he had a few in him when he stepped on the stage. The leprechaun hat and the pints of Guinness were nice details that made the Irish crowd quite happy.

My favourite song of the night was Ants Marching, with a brilliant violin solo by Boyd Tinsley. Being more of an old-school fan, I thought there were too many songs from the latest album, a total of 8: Funny The Way It Is, Squirm, Shake Me Like a Monkey, Lying In The Hands Of God, Seven, Why I Am, You & Me, Baby Blue. Even so, the band managed to get a few of the classics in, like Stay Or Leave, Gravedigger, The Stone, Crash Into Me and Crush. I was a bit disappointed that some of my own favourites, like #41, Say Goodbye, Jimi Thing or Typical Situation, didn't make it, but it was a great setlist nonetheless. The other problem was the very short, and somewhat lukewarm, single encore. But that seems to be Dublin City Council's fault, with their 11pm curfew... Oh well, I shouldn't be complaining about a great almost-3-hour concert, should I?

I've already mentioned Dave's hectic behaviour that helped ignite the crowd, and the amazing Boyd Tinsley violin solo. Add to that Jeff Coffin's fantastic performance on the saxophone (who seemed to never run out of breath); the less than brilliant but still very good Tim Reynolds on the electric guitar; fan-favourite Carter Beauford on the drums (who threw so many drumsticks to the crowd and I couldn't get my hands on a single one, argh!); Stefan Lessard on the bass; and Rashawn Ross playing trumpet. The result was an awesome concert that started slow but had the crowd roaring for more by the end of the night.

Here's the complete setlist:

Bartender
Stay Or Leave
Funny The Way It Is
Squirm
Shake Me Like A Monkey
Lying In The Hands Of God
Gravedigger
Anyone Seen The Bridge
Ants Marching
#27
Seven
The Stone
Crash Into Me
Crush
Where Are You Going
Why I Am
You & Me
You Might Die Trying
All Along The Watchtower

Encore
Baby Blue
Cornbread

Will be posting some of the videos and photos I was able to take during the show as soon as I have the time to sort through them all. Stay tuned!

If you thought that 5€ to go from Galway to Dublin Airport was still too expensive, here's a price reduction - now it only costs 1€! Yes, that's correct, 1€ for a 217Km bus journey!

It's part of Citylink's campaign for their new "Non-Stop" service, that also includes the routes from Galway to Cork, Shannon Airport and Clifden:

The "Super Singles" ticket is available 7 days a week but must be bought, in advance, through Citylink’s on-line sales reservation service.

Tickets will be made available in limited numbers, so it’s essential that travellers book their tickets early in order to secure themselves the most affordable travel ticket Ireland has ever seen.

If the price of the bus ticket when planning trips was already an afterthought, now it's even less than that, because it's almost free. I pay more for the bus ticket to get to work...

The only thing missing now is a late bus from Dublin Airport to Galway. The last one is at 21:15, and in the last couple of trips I've arrived later than that and the only option was Gobus. And speaking about GoBus, I'm curious to see what they do about this. First they had the WiFi (which, by the way, I never managed to get to work) and the WC services to justify the triple price (€15). And they could also argue that their service was faster because it was non-stop. But it seems that Citylink now provides all that for MUCH less. Either GoBus lowers their prices or invents some other service that compensates for a price 15x higher.

Strippers?

Yeah, I know it's been a while since my last post. And it has been even longer since I did any proper post about the life here in Galway. I think the last ones were during the Volvo Ocean Race. But don't you think that nothing has happened since then! It's just that... well, instead of being lame and saying I didn't have time to post, I'll do a quick summary of what has been happening.

So, in reverse chronological order:

This last week was the "back to work" week. To start off nicely, I had a great 16-hour trip back to Galway (including a 7-hour wait at Madrid airport) which left me completely messed up for the rest of the week. And getting back to work after 1 week out also meant extra stuff to do and not even a bit of time to wander around the interwebs. Aw, c'mon, don't give me that look. Everyone surfs around the Internet while at work...

The week before that was spent in Portugal. The 6-month INOV Contacto internship had ended and I so I took 1 week off to go back to my home country. Plans had been made to spend most of the time visiting friends and that's what I did. Going to the beach and finally get some proper sunlight was also part of the plan, but with all the other stuff happening there wasn't a whole lot of time for that. And there was also the not so nice part of taking care of paperwork. Anyway, it was a great week, and I wish I could have stayed longer.

Two weeks before leaving I had a friend coming over to visit. And as a good host I showed him the best that Galway has to offer. That means a lot of pubs. That also means going out from Monday to Friday (he left on Saturday). During that week we also visited Dublin, and more importantly, I finally went to the Guinness Storehouse. I got to see how the stuff is made, tasted the best pint in the world (right at the brewery, you can't get any better than that!), and learned how to pour a pint of Guinness correctly. Also had a chance to show him that tag rugby is a lot of fun and not to be mocked with. All in all, I think I convinced him to come back one of these days, and that means it was a great week (the best bit was definitely the Irish breakfast...).

And going all the way back to June, 3 friends came to visit, during the last weekend of the Volvo Ocean Race. Listened to some concerts that were happening outside while confortably sitting down in the living room, watched the Portuguese national soccer team pulling one of those last-minute goals against Albania for the World Cup Qualifiers, and went out to enjoy the Galway nightlife and one of the most important aspects of Irish culture - the pubs.

And now that this has been taken care of, blogging will resume it's natural rhythm.

Stay tuned!

I “promised” a detailed report of the small trip I did to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, right? So I invoke the “a picture is worth a thousand words” rule, and here are roughly 17 thousand words about my trip. Is that detailed enough?

The 16th of March, having dinner and then going out:

On St. Patrick’s Day morning afternoon, a taste of the parade and all the festive mood around the city:

And also a few shots of buildings and suchlike:

And for the more distracted, in the last few days I have been posting a few funny pictures shot during Paddy’s Day.

During St. Patrick’s Day @ Dublin.

And a real chick in the middle.

During St. Patrick’s Day @ Dublin.

I mentioned in this blog how to make green beer a few days ago. And then while we were wandering around Dublin during St. Patrick’s Day we happened to enter The Church where they were actually selling it. So of course I had to try, right?

A €15 single ticket and about €20 return ticket from Galway to Dublin was quite a good deal already. Quite cheap for a trip of more than 200Km. The worst part was the huge amount of time it took. Since the bus stopped in a lot of small towns, it took it at least 3 and a half hours, and it could be as long as 5 hours.

Well, just recently (9th of March, apparently) Gobus started offering a new non-stop service that's supposed to take only 2h45m. That would be good news in itself, but to make it even better this new service includes free Wifi! The trips just became a lot less boring! And to make it even better, the price came down as well: only €10 (it's a flat rate, though). I haven't used the service yet (I didn't know about it when I went to Dublin for St. Patrick's), but I'll surely try it the next time I go to the capital.

And what happens when such a compelling service comes into the market? The competitors have to respond to it in order not to lose all their customers. And that's what Citylink did by starting a campaign with €5 tickets to both Dublin City and Dublin Airport. It's an offer with limited availability and bookings have to be made in advance and on their website. Only 5€ for a 200Km trip? That's insanely cheap!

Hooray for competition!

During St. Patrick’s Day @ Dublin.

During St. Patrick's Day @ Dublin.