Tica Irlanda

Folks,

The count-down to Paddy’s day has begun. In preparation we set off on a reconnaissance trip to check out San José’s only Irish bar.

Desperately seeking a pub
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Dennis, our neighbour, had told us that there was a new Irish bar in San José. The address was 150m west of Hotel del Rey. This sounded easy enough. Easy, that is, if you know your east from your west. I confidently headed east, sure that it was west. We asked barmen, security men, fast food sellers, and even the police. No-one knew where it was, and not even the policeman asked me why, if I was looking for west, was I travelling east?

Tica Irlanda
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Anyway, eventually we found it! It’s fairly new. It’s owned by a guy called ‘Fast’ Eddie McAteer. Apparently he used have a bar in Chicago before. It looks well. There’s a copy of the 1916 proclamation behind the bar, with large pictures of James Connolly and Padraig Pearse on either side. Above are smaller pictures of the signatories of the proclamation.

However, I’m not so sure about how it’s being run. There were very few customers. The manager wasn’t there when we arrived and the 3 girls behind the bar were just having a laugh between themselves, and getting customers to buy them Baileys, of which they had several while we were there.

‘Fast’ Eddie
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A little while after we arrived, ‘Fast’ Eddie appeared. The girls told him that there was a guy who had just left without paying, but that he’d left his glasses on the table. Eddie took the glasses and crushed them. And then set off in not pursuit in no particular direction, because he didn’t know where he’d gone.

The New York bar
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While we were in the vicinity, we decided to check out the New York bar. Which apparently was the only bar to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day before. And the signs are up that they’re serving ‘corn beef and cabbage’ on Friday. However, we weren’t mad about the bar. It’s quite big, but full of elderly American’s looking very sad and surrounded by slightly less elderly Tica women. Even sadder were the Tica women who weren’t chatting with the elderly Americans, because they just sat around the wall without even a drink.

St. Paddy’s Day
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The school is celebrating St. Paddy’s Day on Thursday, because we’re closed Fridays. So we’re going to have cookery classes in how to cook Bread and Butter Pudding (a better alternative to Corned Beef and Cabbage I thought), and show an Irish film. Then after school the teachers, and any students that want to, can come on a pub crawl around Heredia. It will be a pub crawl with a treasure hunt thrown in.

On Paddy’s Day itself, we’re going to head in to Tica Irlanda for the ‘Live Irish Music’, by none other than … ‘Fast’ Eddie McAteer.
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So that was this week. I’m really looking forward to this week, because not only have we Paddy’s Day, but my sister and brother-in-law Sharon and Niall are arriving on Wednesday for two weeks.

Pura Vida,

Éamon