The Erin Express Warm up!

The Erin Express is a pub crawl to several Irish bar's around Philly. Apparently this thing started 30 years ago. This year the crawl happens on March 8th and March 15th. The first crawl is the 'warm up'. Though i went to both crawls last year and they both seemed exactly the same to me. They have yellow school buses that bus you around to all the bars. This year there were 15 bars participating in the crawl but there are several other bars you can hit up, but the buses just don't have those on their route.

Last year i only made it to 3 bars, i was determined to make it to at least 5 this time. Three bars on a pub crawl is pretty pathetic i know...i drove into Philly Friday night so i wouldn't have to get up as early to start the crawl. John and Graham let me crash at their place even though they weren't doing the express this weekend. They don't live in the cleanest place in the whole world...but the sink was only half full of dirty dishes.Somehow i woke up at 7:30 am. My plans were to meet up with Manthan, Dave, and Jeff at 9am. They took a little long pre-gaming and didn't come by to where i was until 9:40 am. They had a couple shots in them too so i had some catching up to do.

We decided to play it safe and stop by Seven Eleven to get some food in us. i went with the ham, cheese, and egg sandwich and two taquitos. We haven't even been to the bar yet and Manthan, Jeff, and Dave had to pee already...
At least Jeff could hold it until we got to our first destination which was Cavanuagh's. The forecast for the day was "miserable" but we decided to walk around in just t-shirts anyway with no rain gear. 4 blocks away from the bar and it just starts pouring. Should have gotten a cab. Below is Dave being cool...we started with a pitcher of Coors Light between Manthan and myself and then got two pitchers of Guinness...we thought we might as well drink good beer while we could still taste what we were drinking.
There are some interesting characters that show up at these things. At the one table at the bar there were this group of old people playing drinking games. They even made t-shirts. On the back they had a "10 Reasons to Party with Old People" list, one of the items was that they could use their bed pans as mugs...that's just sick nasty.

One of the other characters i saw at Cav's was this kid with a helmet. He must party pretty hard to wear a helmet. i thought he didn't see me snap a picture but looking at the picture i took...he probably did notice.
While waiting outside of Cav's to decide our next stop, we decided to get a random picture taken with some girls. Not sure when jeff was trying to pull here...
The next stop was Blarney Stone, it was so crowded there...i didn't even get a beer there. Wasn't long until we got a call from Bridget, Katie, and friend to meet them at the Green Room bar. Not sure why its called the Green Room. Did not notice anything being particularly green about it.
After having a beer at the Green Room we hopped on the yellow bus to Kellian's (i think) then peaced to some bar that wasn't on the crawl, McGillin's.
McGillin's was huge, and there were massive tables to sit at as well. Manthan tried talking all of us into just staying there for the rest of the time. But then we wouldn't really be 'crawling' now would we. So i kind of shot that idea down. What was cool about the bar was their bathroom stalls. i don't normally get excited over the stalls but they had double doors...like something in a saloon. But a little different with a serious lock on it. Could only be busted open with a battering ram.
By this time, Manthan and i have already lost Dave and Jeff...happened last year too. Dave said he had to 'check' on his dog. But we all know that he just couldn't handle The Erin Express. Jeff...not really sure where he went. He met up with some of his friends and disappeared.

The next bar we wanted to go to was the Parkway Bar and Grille, but on the way there our group got split and Manthan, Lisa, and myself went to the Cherry Tavern.
Here we got some nachos, sandwiches, and some Guinness in frosted mugs. Frosted mugs are the coolest, can't remember the last time i had a beer in a frosted mug. Makes the drinking so much more enjoyable.

Finally we got word from Bridget and Katie telling us to meet them at the Irish Pub. It was about 10 minutes away from where we were...it was freezing outside at this point and the wind started to pick up too. On the way to the bar Lisa caught a cab to...not sure, and i don't think i want to know.

The Irish Pub was pretty packed. The worst thing about this place was that we had to pay a cover...i thought i was going to make it through the day with not paying one but the two girls just had to pick a bar with a cover charge...lame.
As usual Katie was mack'n it at the bar with some guys. Bridget met up with another friend (Erin) there as well. By this time i was so out of it. The only thing on my mind was 'sleep'. i did manage to down one beer here though and while walking Erin home the girls hopped in a cab with some guys and disappeared. Manthan was pretty hungry so we hit up the nearest pizza place and got two slices of plain pizza.

After we got some food in our stomach's we gave Dave a call to see if he was functioning yet. He finally was up again and told us to come over. On the way there, Manthan shared with me that he didn't know Dave's address and but he did know what street the place was on and the door to his apartment looked "pretty". Of course we over shot his door by half a block before turning around and getting in his place.

Not even two steps into the door, manthan manages to kick dave's dog, Pim, in the face. But she didn't let that scare her from attacking us with licks of her tongue.
Steph was in bed...it was only 8pm. What's up with that? Manthan and Dave decided to see if they could get her back up. But failed...but she did say she would like a soda, a Cherry Coke. Dave wanted some fancy asian food...so we went to this place called Square On Square. A little confusing because their logo was two cubes. Not sure what that was all about.

i couldn't decide what to order so i just got the same thing Dave did. The wanton soup and general tso. To mix it up a bit i got some spider rolls.
i wasn't sure what spoon to use, i thought you started from the outside...but the inner spoon looked more like a soup spoon. i used the outside spoon first, but ended up just holding the bowl to my mouth and drinking the rest of the broth. i'm pretty classy i know. The next dish to come out was the spider rolls. Not sure why they call them spider rolls, they're just crab.
i tried to offer some to Dave but he didn't want any. i did another classy move here, ate one of the rolls with the crab legs sticking out of my mouth. Should have taken a picture but pretty much looked like Mr. Bean eating a prawn. Manthan didn't find it very entertaining, his only response was,"you're disgusting."

The next dish was the general tso. It wasn't called general tso but that's pretty much what it tasted like. It came with a bowl of rice and some broccoli. The tea that was served was really good too. i got about three quarters through this dish before i had to stop. i reached my limit, any more and my stomach would pop.
i got the rest my meal to go and the three of us just chatted for a bit. While Manthan had his head down for a second, Dave thought it would be a good idea to pour soy sauce in Manthan's water. Somehow Manthan didn't notice that he water now looked like tea and drank it anyway. Dave and i laughed a little, but then Manthan started laughing...the two of us weren't sure why he was laughing but wasn't long until we all were cackling like a bunch of hyenas. i'm sure the waiters loved us at this point.

Dave then got a call from Jeff, he was still alive! Took like 6 calls before he finally understood where we were. Somehow Jeff ended up in the suburbs a million miles away and said he would try to get to Dave's later. We then paid our bill, picked up a soda for Steph, and headed back to Dave's. Dave was kind enough to let me sleep on his hard wood floor with just a pillow. Rather than let Manthan and i sleep he decided to let his dog to freely pounced on us and stick dog toys in our faces. All i wanted to do was sleep! Jeff showed up a bit later, his taxi cab fare totaled to 47 bones...he wasn't kidding about being far away. Finally Dave went to bed and locked up his dog around 11pm. i then bounced at 6am to go home. Didn't realize it was day lights savings until 11am. Overall it was a good time. Got to seven bars, but i think next time i should figure out a better place to sleep.