Flour Power

After going to The King’s Head two days in a row, yesterday I decided to go somewhere else for a change. After all, the idea is getting to know as many pubs as possible, and not going to the same ones every time.

The destination of choice was Coyotes, a place I had been curious about since I passed in front of it a few weeks ago and liked what I saw at the door. And Wednesday the drinks are cheaper – only €3.5! A bargain, I say!

Upon arrival we (two of my housemates decided to come with) were greeted with a queue – they were asking for everyone’s ID. This didn’t sound very good, because it probably meant that the crowd inside would be very young… so young that they really needed to check everyone trying to enter, to make sure no under-18s would be able to slip inside unnoticed. And my suspicions were right. We were probably the oldest people there (apart from the staff), and I felt like I was someone’s older brother, there to keep an eye on my sibling. And to make matters even worse, the music was terrible! So after one Guinness (in a plastic cup!!), we headed off to the next stop – The Living Room.

The Living Room is a pub with a small dance floor, that becomes somewhat nightclub-ish later at night. It’s a good alternative to the “pure” nightclubs, and the crowd is usually on my age range. The problem yesterday was that, apparently, it isn’t very nightclub-ish on Wednesdays, and since the gals insisted on getting some dancing done, we immediately left to our final, and longest, stop of the evening.

Which was Róisin Dubh. I had already been there a few times, and knew that at around 11pm (after the live performance of the day), a DJ goes on stage and the concert area turns into a dance floor. Yesterday was no exception, and after some time I was jumping around like crazy. The music there is not the mainstream stuff you find in nightclubs. It’s more of a rock genre, and yesterday’s playlist included Pixies, Franz Ferdinand, Beirut, Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Gomez, Nirvana and Blur. Great stuff! When I got home at 3am (yes, I had to get up at 7am to go to work…) my ears were still buzzing…

This episode helps proving that here in Galway there’s no such thing as only going out on the weekend. There’s plenty of animation every single day of the week (I didn’t even mention the queues to the nightclubs, but maybe that was Rag Week’s fault). The only problem is that I have to sleep every once in a while, and having to wake up every morning to go to work doesn’t help…

Last Saturday Paulo (a portuguese lad), Pat (his housemate) and I went to the other side of the river, to Salthill, a suburb of Galway city. The destination? O’Connor’s Famous Pub, a typical Irish pub which bills itself as the first singing pub in Ireland. The decoration is exquisite, to say the least, and includes old gaslights, farm implements, crockery, photos, weighing scales and a near life size statue of John Wayne. There was live music (as is customary there) and even a singalong comprising most of the pub took place. One thing I’ve noticed was the wide amplitude of ages inside the pub: there were people from my age (24) up until people in their 60s. That was kind of cool, seeing the oldsters downing pints, but I would have prefered more young people.

Lots of lamps and all possible kinds of crap hanging from the ceiling and walls.

Curious tidbit: the bar is cleaned only once or twice per year, and it takes a couple of days to clean it all (source: Pat).

After O’Connor’s we headed to The Warwick Nightclub, just a few meters down the road, despite signs of disapproval from Paulo. We went anyway both because it was nearby and also because Pat’s friends who were at O’Connor’s (including the band members) would go there as well.

Anyway, the nightclub is not bad per se. Quite the opposite, actually. The space is very pleasant, with a big dance floor, and an area with tables that manages to be both big and cozy, due to the fireplace. The real problem is that it was, to put it simply, almost empty. For a nightclub that size, there had to be at least 10 times more people there to be any fun. Oh well, the not-so-bad thing is that the drinks were not more expensive than in the pub (which seems to be standard here in Galway), so we just hanged around the fireplace drinking Guinness.

There was a funny episode though, just after we arrived. Apparently there was a hen party going on and we were invited to bite some sweets from a girl’s belly. Even though the girl was a bit huge, we didn’t want to be rude and did it anyway.