"Well I Took A Stroll On The Old Long Walk"
- sanderssam
- Jul 4, 2019
- 4 min read
Today was two things: a great food/walking tour and a great live band. And yes, as the title suggests, part of the tour was out on "the old long walk". Day I Ay I Ay.
Anyhow, I signed up for this "food/walking tour of Galway", because hey, you meet people, and if there's anything to "irish cuisine", it'd be through that, eh?
So I met up with Lara, our tour guide, two random couples from the states, and a family from Georgia who had a blind daughter. And then me. I can really light it up as a third wheel.
Anyhow, we met at Garvey's, which is right on Eyre Square (aka the square right in the heart of town) for the first "course". Keeping the diet today is going to be... tough.
Talked a lot about Galway here, got to know each other. Apparently, the largest Jameson mirror in the country is here... but if that was important, it wouldn't be blocked by a million bottles, signs and other things. One takeaway from this tour is that Galway is a great acquirer of supposedly cool things that nobody actually wanted, which leads me...
...Which leads me to this lovely statue we passed.
Ok. So you might be thinking- what do this Irish guy and this Estonian guy have in common besides their last name? And the answer is... nothing. Apparently the statue only exists because Estonia wanted to give it to Dublin upon their entry in the EU. But Dublin said... nah. And who jumped up for it? Galway. So now, it's the designated area for stumbling drunks to confess their sins on the walk home. There's beginning to develop a theme here of "Galway will take it!".
Next was this restaurant "Tribeton", which to me reeked of "hipster nonsense", but the food wasn't bad.
Obviously I avoided the black pudding Mash for carbs and black pudding-related factors. Apparently, to describe the beer in the background, in Mayo and Galway counties, ordering a "Special" at a bar is half Guinness pour on top of a Smithwick's, which was described as a "Summer Drink" here. Which is funny, because I thought a summer drink was a pina colada.
What I *did* learn (without humiliating myself) is that ordering a "black and tan" (guinness and bass ale in a similar fashion) is a *horrible* idea in Ireland. It's kind of like ordering a "Red Coat" in the 1800s in the USA... you know, back when we really hated the English instead of just beating them in soccer and performing tea-drinking celebrations in their face.
After that, we did take a stroll on the old long walk, which is actually right by this picture from before... I'll just reference it so the story I'll say makes sense.
Ok, so what's the deal with the Spanish Arch? In true Irish fashion, I'm told no one knows, but it's likely one of 3 things-- all according to my guide Lara, so this can't be prejudiced, right?
1) In the middle ages, traders from the mediterranean would come in to the city through this arch. Not being overly discriminate, the Galwegians just referred to them all as Spanish, and hence the arch they came through was the "Spanish Arch"
2) Famously, a Spanish guy was stabbed down by this Arch. It's also allegedly the inspiration for the word "lynching", as the Mayor of Galway, James Lynch, hung his son (after hugging and kissing him) after stabbing that Spanish guy.
3) It commemorates the post-Spanish armada settling of many of the Spanish soldier through here... you know, after they "met with" many of the "farmers daughters" in Galway... hence their "hair was black but her eyes were blue" lyric in the eponymous song.
Are any/all of these true? Who knows.
After that we walked up to Skeff's (not typing the full name here, since the guide didn't say it and I don't feel like looking it up) to make our own Irish coffees.
Step 1-- disparage the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco for ripping off Irish coffees as a recipe.
Step 2- combine sugar (if you want), crap Whiskey (in this case Powers), HOT coffee, and "pouring cream", which she shook up in a bar cup. If done right it should look like a Guinness, a dark coffee on the bottom and white cream on the top. Here was mine.
Mark coffee number 9 of my life up! Not bad when you mix it with everything else. Next one marks double digits, so I'm gonna have to be careful here. Also tried a *little* bit of a slice of Bailey's cheesecake.
After this the tour broke up, I had a nice, long walk home. Had to rest up for live music later!
Went out to #taaffesforthecraic for live music at 9:30-- they care so much about soccer here they didn't start until the women's world cup game (Sweden v. Netherlands) finished up though, leading to... some delays.
Had a beautiful spot right in front of the band
I successfully avoided the one *REALLY* drunk Irish guy on my right who loved Trump and talking too loud, but eventually he left and I actually met a couple from Buffalo (well, Amherst)! Who would have thought. Anyhow, 2 hours later of great music, and I went home. Tiny taste below:
Random Thoughts:
-Apparently, Irish men (or Galwegians), just do random dances to traditional Irish music in bars. They asked me to join them but... no, no, not yet. Also, much like that kid in 6th grade watching from the wall, I really don't know how to yet.
-I really tried to suss out from our guide whether people here actually like Galway Girl (both versions) or not. I think, historically, they at least respect the Steve Earle one, but the Ed Sheeran one the answer was something along the lines of "We love Ed Sheeran, but that version's played out and ruined O'Connell's Pub (where the video is)".
Moment of Zen:
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