This place looked like it had potential…

 

Saturday afternoon, I was thinking I really wanted to find a nice Irish pub to hang out in.  I hoped for a place with good music.  Too many bars were playing shitty dance music.  I know the Irish have good taste in tunes and I was hoping to find a place where I could Shazam a lot and find new stuff to listen to at home.  Taking heed of my advice to look down alleys and alcoves, I spotted McGrattans Bar, which looked like it had promise.  We approached the door and I stood there for a second, listening for shitty dance music.  I didn’t hear any, so we ventured in…

Unfortunately, what they were playing was almost as bad as dance music.  The TVs were all tuned to football.  I know a lot of people love to watch sports.  I find it pretty boring.  I’d rather watch football/soccer than golf, though.  Watching golf, especially on TV, is kind of like watching flies fuck.  Still, it wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t have a couple of rounds.  We tried a couple of Irish lagers and enjoyed the deadpan bartender.  McGrattans appears to be a somewhat popular place.  It even has pool tables.  Maybe Bill and I should have tried our hand at billiards, but neither of us really plays pool.

Bill enjoys beer…

The inside was pretty quaint.  It was missing music, though.

I remember liking this beer pretty well.

 

After a couple of rounds, we moved on.  The area around Merrion Row has a lot of pubs to choose from, most of which featured football and crowds of young men eagerly staring at the TV screens.  We passed one bar that appeared to have a lively outdoor area, but it was super crowded.  So we went back to Chambers Pub and Cocktail Bar, where our red haired bearded friend was back on duty.  We had a couple of whiskeys, since they didn’t have any draft beers we hadn’t already tried.  I did switch back to beer when we decided to have dinner.

Chambers was playing sports on their TVs, but they were also playing some great old 70s and 80s music, which satisfied my needs quite nicely.  I was also enjoying people watching.  I thought we might make it until 9:15pm, when the music was supposed to start, but we were too tired… beer drinking will do that to you.  I think we left about an hour before the band was supposed to show up.

We went round the corner from the bar for some grub.

Bill had a burger and fries.

I had an open faced steak sandwich with bearnaise sauce.  It was just the right size and the fries were delicious.

 

Total bill for our evening at Chambers was about 69 euros, which was less than I was expecting.  Next time we’re in Dublin, we’ll definitely visit Chambers again.  I think it was my favorite of the pubs we visited.  After we ate, we stopped by the Spar to pick up some water and a bottle of wine in case we wanted to stay in Sunday night.