Life in Barcelona

I’ve celebrated St. Patrick’s every year since I was old enough to go to the pub, not because I’m Irish, but because it’s such a famous celebration that you’re guaranteed a good night out, and Barcelona’s St. Patrick’s day merriment was certainly no exception.

We started off at ‘Flaherty’s Irish bar’ which is located just off the Ramblas, close to Drassanes Metro. It’s one of the largest of the many, many Irish bars in Barcelona, so there’s usually a lot more space. Of course on this particular night of the year the place is absolutely packed, so we had to push our way through a see of Green wigs and hats and Ireland flags to get to the bar. All was well once we’d got a pint in our hands!

The atmosphere was great, very festive and there was a real mix of nationalities all dancing along to some very cheesy Irish pop tunes. I love the fact that St. Patrick’s day turns everyone in to professional Irish dancers, or maybe that’s just the Guinness?!?

We didn’t want to spend all night in the same place, so we decided to head further up the Ramblas to Calle Ferran, which has another 3 or 4 Irish bars to choose from. We went in to ‘Molly’s fair City’ and I was really surprised to see lots of local people joining in with the madness as well as us foreigners.

The bars stay open until at least 3 or 4 at the weekends, so there was plenty of time to pop in to some more Pubs of the Irish variety, before heading to our last stop, ‘My Bar’ on Calle Ferran. You could definitely tell that everyone was a bit worse for wear by this stage, but there was still plenty of singing (all be it incoherent) and dancing; and it was a really nice end to the night.

It might not be the most ‘Spanish’ of nights out, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a proper pub crawl, and it was worth the wait. Barcelona’s great for bar crawls if you want to see lots of different places. The centre of the city is really easy to get around by foot, and if your legs are a little too wobbly after a cubata or two, there’s always the metro.

In addition to the evening of partying, there was an Irish flavour to the rest of the day, including Irish dancing in Barcelona’s city Centre! Take a look yourself:

Happy belated St. Paddys!

/Janine

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Festivities, Nightlife, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.