The session

Wednesday is a good day for Carl to consider meeting up in town after college for a bit of unwinding, and he suggested and I readily agreed to do just that.

We started in The Merchant Bar at Merchants Arch (right by the Ha'penny Bridge). It's a great place, with a main room of handsome proportions and impressive height. We got there about 4:30 pm, and these guys began their session at 5:00. Normally, we aren't any too keen on live music in pubs, but these guys (they're Scotty Connor and Hugh Finn) were really, really good. They take folk/trad songs and give them a makeover. They are highly skilled on their instruments, and their arrangements are very clever. We thoroughly enjoyed their efforts, as proved by the fact that it was 6:40 by the time we moved on, through Temple Bar to Al's Stage Door Café where we had a pleasant bite to eat in nicely quirky surroundings.

Next stop was the Bison Bar, close to the Clarence Hotel. It's a bit on the down-market side, its main talking point being the use of saddles as seats in one area. We didn't stay too long there before moving on to what proved to be our final destination of the evening - the fabulous Liquor Rooms in the Clarence Hotel. We didn't plan staying there as long as we did, but it's a really super spot and we found it difficult to tear ourselves away. Before we knew it, time had marched on to the stage where we didn't have time to catch the last bus, so ordered another round instead. Evidence of the good time we had is this SP taken in the hand dryer in the gents toilet.