12 pubs of Christmas

If you recall my last year’s text about Christmas in Ireland you might remember that I mentioned a certain thing called “12 Pubs of Christmas”.

Well, let me explain that to you in some more details. Last year we were fresh, just arrived to Ireland, and we saw a bunch of happy people weirdly dressed walking around the city centre. Then I asked what is it all about and people told me “Pub crawl” or “12 Pubs of Christmas”. It did not mean a lot to us since we knew no one so we were just laughing watching all that through the window.

This year, as we now know locals and were invited, we had to do it. 🙂 To be honest with you we were both scared a little bit, more because of the fact that majority of pub crawls end with heavy intoxications and often with hospitalizations. OK, on the bright side we knew that we are going out with normal people willing to have fun, so even if we skip a few drinks or if it takes a bit longer they will not mind.

We started quite early, around 2 PM far on the south side of city centre. First in a row was Headline bar! We had a nice pint there, other friends had a lunch, we grouped in here and started to have fun. Absolutely nothing terrible happened here except the fact that we learned that there are lovely pubs just 15 minutes walking distance from city centre which are cheaper and equally nice as those in Temple Bar.

OK, we did take a couple of funny photos on the way. 🙂

In MVP pub, there was a crazy potato offering some Christmas specials, but they did not offer drinks so early, so we had to run across the street for our second round.

Well, and than back for the third one to the MVP bar. 🙂

As the pub number grows funnier things started to happen, so we ended up communicating virtually with guys who were outside. 🙂

Even funnier was the fact that in this pub one fine gentleman celebrated his 79th birthday with his family, friends and live music. As band mostly played American classics we enjoyed some time here singing songs of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and such.

In the pub number 9 (yes, it was not cloud number 9, even though I slightly felt being there already 🙂 ) I took the following photo thinking about this blog post. Many guests and those who moved here think when they see toilets with “M” and “F” that it means “Male” and “Female” (even though I’ve never seen Male/Female version, it is usually Men-Women). Well no. It is Irish version of “Mna” (Ladies) and “Fir” (Gentleman) so when in Ireland, choose opposite of what your logic is telling you, OK?

We stayed quite some time in pub number 9, had a good craic (another Irish word that you simply need to know, and it means fun, good, positive) and danced for some time. After P#9 we lost some members of All Irish Competition, but my Balkan soul opened here and I wanted to do it all! Let’s go all the way to P#12!

And there we are, 2 AM in Pub number 12 – O’Sheas on the quays and bunch of 60+ people having dance nights. Who said that life ends when you are around 30 and married? Come to Ireland and re-think about it! 🙂

So, to conclude this story, we managed to do all 12 pubs, in 12 hours with 13 drinks.

Don’t ask me about next day, as you can see the post is 2 days late. 😀

Here you can find the map of our incredible experience.

And the list of pubs in order of appearance. 🙂

Headline
Harold’s house
MVP

Kate McCauley
Kavanaghs
Dean Swift

Liberty Belle
Clock
Bakers Bar

O’Donohues’ Rest
Arthur’s
O’Shea’s merchant

Till the next story from Ireland or abroad! Stay tuned!

Happy Christmas everyone!

Love

Balky