Surprise pub crawl

We headed out to our local blues bar again. I'm sure we will soon be regulars at Big Mamma's. The attraction this time was an acoustic guitarist named Pino Forastiere. Calling him a guitarist is like calling Moses a good Jew. He was an exceptional Jew. If you're interested, here's a clip I stole from youtube.


As good as Pino was, he wasn't the highlight of the night. The club is very small so we had to share a table with another couple. We lucked out and the couple spoke English - always a welcome find. He was from Australia and she was from Ireland. In hindsight it was obvious that we were at a table that knew how to drink. Before I was finished my first beer he was up buying us another round. Very nice people but I started to worry about the pace. Between music sets we find out that they live in Saudi Arabia and are out for a quick 5 day vacation. This was their first crack at real beer and drinks since the stuff they get in Saudi is homebrew beer or moonshine. We were definitely in for a long night.
We were relieved to see Big Mamma's closing down at midnight thinking we were out of the "alcohol woods". But our Aussie friend insisted he buy us another beer. So we closed down one bar only to move to another... and then another. We were home at 3:30am and I'm proud to say Sue and I didn't disappoint Canada - a bronze medal in pub crawling is nothing to be ashamed of.  Our Irish friend gave us lots of places to see while in Ireland (we're going to make a sidetrip to Galway, which we only know from a line in a Pogues song) and we ended the evening as best friends never to see each other again.