May 14 2009
Temple Bar
a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/38198497@N02/3545899896/” title=”Sara, Racheal, Emily and Allyson by mlnuttgill, on Flickr”>
Our favorite pub in Dublin became Oliver St. John Gogarty Temple Bar. It is where we started the pub crawl our first night. Interesting pub, it has live irish music upstairs and below it plays the oddist montage of american music. No one would ever hear: Beyonce, Kenny Rogers, and U2 all in the same place back in America. I suppose that is why we love it is much. It accommodated the 14 of us and our unique blend of music as well as exposing us to culture. John reveled in the traditional Irish music longer than all of us since he knew many of the words. He visited Ireland back in the 80s. This pub ironically enough though had Spainiards, Welch, English, French and Croatians but no Irish; therefore we ended up calling it the United Relations Bar. An English man told me after the night was coming to a close that I was the nicest American he had ever met. I told the group later ‘ I was glad I could help diplomatic relations.’ He was a fireman who just had his tooth knocked out by a fire extinguisher. It was a fun night where you talk to 10 foreigners all in one night and get a little piece of their story. Just being in a setting like that was amazing. Of course on our bus trip to thurles we joked, now we are ready to meet some Irish people; since Dublin was full of so many internationals. We were not disappointed when arriving to Thurles….
Enjoying your blog, Michelle. Keep up the good work. It’s cold in Knoxville–39 degrees F. this morning, but sunny. We are not having as much fun as you all are.
Enjoy Thurles and give my best to the group.
A. Edwards
Thank you, I will be writing more. The internet time is limited and it is hard to get it all done- Elaine tells me to go live and stop sitting on computer- so I am trying to balance it all. I have some of the writers to help me out with some stories so hopefully there will be alot on there at once.