The Accidental Beer Drinker

I don't much care for beer, and I rarely drink it.  This makes me a bit of a social outcast in my husband's Irish American family, where the beer flows like wine--as Lloyd Christmas would say--at Notre Dame football tailgaters and other events of equal importance.  (Events like the clock striking 5:00.  Or noon maybe, on a sunny summer day by the lake--but then again, it's always 5:00 somewhere.)

Just kidding about the social outcast part, by the way.

It's so strange, though: when I'm an accidental tourist in a foreign land--meaning that I've come along for the ride on one of my pilot husband's overseas flights to Europe--I become an accidental beer drinker as well.  And the crazy thing is, when I'm over there with my hubby seeing some awesome European city for the first time, for some inexplicable reason beer tastes like Heaven to me.

The first-ever trip I took with my husband (with him up front, driving the airplane) was to Nice, in December of 2011.  At the end of our second day of sightseeing there on the beautiful Cote d'Azur, we bought two tall cans of Heineken at a little grocery store and went down by the water to drink them at sunset.  I don't believe life gets any better than that, and I don't believe I've ever tasted anything so wonderful as that ice cold can of beer I drank as I sat with my favorite person and watched the sky turn orange over the Mediterranean.

You can't see my can of Heineken in this picture; but it's there, believe me.

When I was an accidental tourist once again, in Athens back in March of 2012, my husband and I drank Greek beers at sunset, sitting atop a hill with a panoramic view of the city.  That bottle of Mythos tasted delightfully delicious to me--on that particular night, anyway, with that particular person, in that particular place in the world.

So it's no surprise that the beer in Barcelona this past Friday was surprisingly tasty, too.  I told you yesterday that we saw several Irish pubs during our walk about the city.  After watching the sunset at the Port de Barcelona, we ended up at one of them--Flaherty's, a pub my husband remembered visiting before, as they offered 1 euro beers during happy hour.  Even though they'd gone up to 1.30, we stopped in and each had two bottles of one of the local brews.

There just isn't anywhere more fun than an Irish pub, is there?  My daughter-in-law said that when she was studying abroad in Italy during college, her favorite place to meet up with friends was--where else?--an Irish pub!  (Who has ever even heard of an Italian pub?)

A.K. Damm: good stuff!

You can't get me to drink two bottles of beer at one sitting back home, so I don't know what happens to me when I go across the pond.  Perhaps it's a good thing I don't get to do it too often!