The allure of some city breaks is partly in the eating. Paris, Bologna,
Barcelona — dining well in these destinations is a defining part of the
travel experience. Elsewhere, though, the drink’s the thing — the beautiful
old bars of Edinburgh, Boston, Dublin and Sydney overflow with history and
legend, and you can’t tap into their personality without sampling the best
of them.
That’s where the pub crawl comes in. We’re not advocating irresponsible
imbibing or beery leeriness here, of course. Heaven forfend. The watering
holes we’re talking about are often places where great social changes were
wrought — the Boston Tea Party was first stirred up in a pub, for example;
so was the Easter Rising. Many of them are architectural masterpieces or
celebrated literary dens; all are founts of fine ale and convivial talk.
Most of all, a night spent in a really good pub (or three) is the most
comradely way to get to know the locals.
So, prepare to sup oysters in a colonial tavern and tote your fiddle in a
traditional saloon, as we present the world’s most cockle-warming pub
crawls.
Dublin
“They say a Dubliner would climb across 20 naked women to get to a glass of
Guinness.
Sure, that’s rubbish. I’d ask one of the girls to pass the pint over to me.”
So says my new friend Sean, in the Palace Bar, at the start of my Dublin pub
crawl. Many a true word spoken in drink. “Publin” is a city of 1,000
watering holes, and while Temple Bar, the city’s cobbled entertainment
quarter, has largely surrendered to stags and hens — to tooth-floss frocks
and Saturday-night hurling matches — it’s still possible to find the classic
craic here. Follow the locals.
Early evening, they will be swinging back the door of the Palace (21 Fleet
Street), a polished remnant of Victorian Dublin in the overexposed bosom of
Temple Bar. Inside, a silver-haired barman serves perfect pints of “plain”;
and in the back room, behind a partition as intricate as any cathedral rood
screen, you’ll find solicitors in three-piece suits scanning the racing form
under scrappy sepia photos of Flann O’Brien and Pussy O’Mahoney of The Irish
Times — the pub was the paper’s unofficial office in the 1950s. It’s a
civilised place in which to ease yourself gently into the night ahead.
From the library-like hush of the Palace, skirt south around Trinity College
to join the hurly-burly of Grafton Street, Dublin’s shopping central. Along
on the left, you’ll find Davy Byrne’s (21 Duke Street), erstwhile haunt of
Brendan Behan, “a drinker with a writing problem”, and the poet Oliver St
John Gogarty, who once sold a legless friend to the Royal College of
Surgeons for medical research.
The bar’s leading literary light, though, was Leopold Bloom, who stopped in
for gorgonzola and a glass of burgundy in Ulysses. Since then, Davy’s has
had a Mediterranean-type makeover, with classical statuettes behind the bar
and ye olde touristy menu of oysters and Irish stew. Bloom’s gorgonzola
butty is still available, though — and after 103 years, it must be more
“feety” than ever.
Down your wine — we’re off round the corner to Kehoe’s (9 South Anne Street),
the cosiest old-time boozer left in this glossy part of the city. Grumpy old
John Kehoe died years ago; the drawers in his hefty bar no longer dispense
tea, coffee and tobacco; and the gas lamps above the counter have gone out
for good. But his pub is still thick with dim atmosphere and tangy argument
— especially if you bag the snug, an elaborate walk-in wardrobe built to
protect female drinkers from spit and swearing, but now ready-made for a
romantic assignation.
Sup up, and weave your way west through a maze of lanes and markets towards
Grogan’s Castle Lounge (15 South William Street), a bohemian mix of scruffy
decor and smart art, where vivid canvases hang floor to ceiling and the
clientele inclines towards steaming dogs and straggly beards. Some look as
if they could scarcely afford a pint, never mind a painting.
Now step up the pace, with a trot back towards the Liffey and the fleshpots of
“Temple Barf”. My standout favourite among the superpubs here is the
Porterhouse (16-18 Parliament Street), a maverick microbrewery that combines
brilliant homemade ales with a fizzy, studenty vibe, and will be thumping by
this hour. A trio of house beers on a sample tray costs you £3.50; a trio of
house musicians reel and jig among the eaves for free.
It’s late now, your conversation has degenerated into full Joycean
stream-of-consciousness mode, and that means a breezy 10-minute walk upriver
to the Brazen Head (20 Lower Bridge Street), the essential climax to any Dub
pub crawl.
Ireland’s oldest inn is so ancient, it’s at a whole different altitude: they
claim the sunken courtyard dates from 1198. It was last redecorated a year
later, by the looks of things: the walls are smoker’s orange and stuck with
fire-scarred Wolf Tones posters and portraits of the failed patriot Robert
Emmet, who plotted the 1803 rebellion here. It’s only the drawing pins and
the spilt candle wax holding the place up.
But you’ve come for what’s happening in the back bar: an unstoppable music
party, sometimes fiddles and whistles, sometimes rhythm and blues, but
always standing room only. As you finally tip out at 1am, pay your respects
to James Joyce, who gurns on a plaque outside. “Good puzzle would be cross
Dublin without passing a pub,” he wrote. Congratulations: you’ve failed
gloriously.
The morning after: dogs don’t come much hairier than at the Guinness
Storehouse (www.guinness-storehouse.com
; £9.50), where a big-budget “visitor experience” whisks you up through
seven storeys of stout history to the Gravity Bar, for a free pint and
beergut-wrenching views across the city.
Where to stay: the Fleet Street Hotel (00 353 1 670 8122, www.fleethoteltemplebar.com),
next to the Palace Bar, has doubles from £88, B&B. VC
Sydney
Given Australia’s beer-loving reputation, you’d expect the Sydney waterfront
to be a sawdust-strewn strip of shady shebeens and insalubrious saloons, but
you’d be mistaken.
These days, it seems Sydneysiders couldn’t give a XXXX for anything less than
the finest wines in the swankiest surroundings, and nowhere is this more
evident than at the Finger Wharf, where thousands of “ten-pound poms”
stepped ashore to a new life down under. Nowadays, it houses a boutique
hotel, Russell Crowe and a host of sophisticated restaurants — and
sophistication is the last thing you need when you fancy a night on the
lash.
Fortunately, all is not lost — and the old-time drinking dens that remain have
survived because they’re just so damned good at what they do. Kick off at
the Lord Nelson (www.lordnelson.com.au),
on the corner of Kent and Argyle Streets, within glimpsing distance of the
magnificent Harbour Bridge, seen between rows of terraced cottages. Built in
1836, the Nelson is the oldest licensed pub in Sydney, serving home-brewed
beer ranging from the mellow-yellow Quayle ale, at 4.2%, up to the psychotic
Old Admiral, a rich, black dogbolter, at 6.1%.
There’s time for one of each here before you head along Lower Fort Street to
the marvellous Hero of Waterloo, at number 81. Probably Sydney’s finest
boozer, it was built by convicts — you can still see their chisel marks in
the stone walls — and it’s as though their hard labour earned the place its
honesty. Locals say it used to be so quiet in here, you could hear a man
change his mind, but now a chap called Pete Mann plays Tom Waits covers on a
clapped-out piano, and with the locally brewed James Squire’s Original Amber
Ale on tap, you could stay all night.
But you can’t: it’s time for a sing-along at the Mercantile (25 George
Street). Expect tiled walls, an easily hosed floor and a bombproof bar
propped up by the kind of grumpy old men whose disappointment sustained the
empire. But they’re a good-natured lot, tapping their feet to a guitar and
fiddle combo singing songs of gold, of cattle, of drought and dust.
Drink up, then head downhill to Fortune of War (137 George Street), another of
the city’s oldest pubs, which overlooks the waterfront, but makes little
concession to the tourist hordes. Frankly, it makes no effort at all, but is
worth a visit, if only for a pint of VB.
Now take a stroll around Circular Quay, stopping off for a reviver at Minus 5
(2 Opera Quays), which is more of a sideshow than a bar — carved entirely
from ice, down to the shot glasses, it’s worth the £12.50 entry fee (which
includes a drink) just to see Aussies freaking out at the sight of something
cold.
Stagger onward, past the opera house, following the curve of Farm Cove around
to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, from where you’ll enjoy a perfect view of the
harbour if you close one eye. Then wobble on to Woolloomooloo, ignoring the
Finger Wharf and dropping in for a late one at the Tilbury (corner of
Nicholson and Forbes Streets). It used to be rougher than a robber’s dog
around here, but that’s changed — these days, the Tilbury is one of the few
places where the beer still comes in pints.
Still thirsty? The nightclubs of Kings Cross are just up the hill.
The morning after: the £1.70 plate of pie, mash, luminous green peas
and gravy at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels (Cowper Wharf Roadway) has been soaking
up Sydney’s hangovers since 1945.
Where to stay: if you make it all the way round, the five-star Blue
Hotel (www.tajhotels.com/sydney
) is right on the Finger Wharf and less than a 30-second stagger from
Harry’s Cafe de Wheels. Qantas Holidays (020 8222 9128, www.qantas.co.uk
) has seven nights there from £1,123pp, including flights. Or stay at the
Lord Nelson (00 612 9251 4044, www.lordnelson. com.au), which has ensuite
rooms for £75, B&B. CH
Boston
“Revolutionary ideas may have come from the speeches of the Sons of Liberty at
Faneuil Hall, but their courage and inspiration came from our taverns.”
So says Sam Jones, costumed guide for the Boston Freedom Trail Historic Pub
Crawl — and I never argue with a man in breeches and a tricorn hat. It’s
true that Boston has always been a beer city, from the many immigrant-Oirish
boozers serving shamrock-topped Guinness and plates of corned beef to the
Sam Adams Brewery, the acknowledged trailblazer of America’s new-found
passion for craft beer-making.
Our ale trail is book-ended by iconic bars from opposite ends of American
history, starting with the Bull & Finch (84 Beacon Street) — now called
Cheers. This is the cellar pub that inspired America’s best-loved sitcom,
mainly because the show’s creators liked its cast of wisecracking barflies —
who swiftly moved elsewhere once Cheers became a tourist phenomenon and
coachloads of couch potatoes piled in.
The sidewalk stairs look the same, but today the bar has a greeter on the door
and “Giant Norm Burgers” on the menu, while the pool room out back is now
the Cheers souvenir store. It’s still worth the pilgrimage, though, if only
for the terrific ales from Boston’s Harpoon microbrewery. As Norm Peterson
might say: “Mine’s a vat of beer and a snorkel.”
So, the Bull & Finch is now mostly bull, but wander just round the block
and you’ll find the Cheers spirit thriving still — at the Sevens (77 Charles
Street), a darts-and-dungarees dive bar in an unlikely setting among the
brownstone boutiques of chichi Charles Street. Here, you can observe
real-life Cliffs and Carlas comparing broken marriages and missed
opportunities, or workmen supping mugs of Boston baked beans. Photos of
plastered regulars are plastered along the wall — and if you go back two
nights running, you may even find that everybody knows your name.
Next, retrace your steps and cross Boston Common, the city’s immaculate
pleasure lawn, towards the downtown skyline, a heart-lifting mix of colonial
church spires and silver skyscrapers.
Left off Charles Street is the Jacob Wirth (31-37 Stuart Street), a Rhineland bierkeller
little changed since Jake himself arrived from Prussia in 1868. If this is
Friday evening, Mel Stiller will be cranking up his sing-along piano in the
front bar — he’s been leading communal karaoke here for 20 years. If it’s
not, content yourself with a pint of Jake’s Special Dark and a gander at the
mini-museum of pub curios along the food-hall wall.
Now head north on Tremont Street, which leads you alongside the Common and
deep into colonial Boston, towards the Omni Parker House (60 School Street),
where Dickens recited A Christmas Carol, JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier,
Malcolm X worked as a bus boy and Ho Chi Minh as a pastry chef.
This is a grande dame hotel, not a pub, but its bar, fortified with
Moët & Chandon bottles and sotto-voce conversation, is a lovely
place to kick back with a slab of Boston Cream Pie (invented here) before
you take up alcoholic arms again in the old quarter.
Three treasonous taverns compete for attention among the lanes of 17th-century
Blackstone Block, just beyond Faneuil Hall. The Bell in Hand, a banging-DJ
type of place, claims to be America’s oldest pub; the Green Dragon reckons
it’s where Paul Revere and co plotted the Boston Tea Party; but the best by
far is the Union Oyster House (41 Union Street), indisputably America’s
oldest restaurant. Its 1820s “raw” bar, a smooth semicircle of timeworn
mahogany, is a thing of real beauty, and you’ll find that a crock of gloopy
clam chowder precisely complements your pint of spiky, hoppy Harpoon IPA.
Thirsty for more? All right, then, an Irish pub: the Black Rose (160 State
Street), Boston’s most boisterous, with portraits of “patriots” behind the
bar and a decent stab at down-home Dublin craic in front of it — especially
once the bodhrans start beating (9.30pm-1am). Cheers.
The morning after: back to the Black Rose for Irish breakfast
(weekends, from 9am); or the South Street Diner (corner of Kneeland Street)
for syrup and sausages, 1950s-style.
Where to stay: Funway Holidays (0870 444 0770, www.funwayholidays.co.uk)
has Boston breaks from £539pp, including flights from Heathrow with Virgin
Atlantic and four nights, room-only, at the four-star Lenox Hotel, five
minutes from the Bull & Finch and with its own convivial Irish bar,
Solas. Or try Just America (01730 266588, www.justamerica.co.uk
). VC
Edinburgh
If you need an excuse, you could always claim you’re doing a heritage tour.
Greyfriars Bobby’s, Deacon Brodie’s, Logie Baird’s, the Jekyll &
Hyde, the Conan Doyle — Edinburgh pub names all. The city’s best bars are
arranged in a crawlably compact cluster either side of Princes Street, and
it’s only proper to approach this liquid history chronologically, beginning
in the Old Town on cobbled Grassmarket, where a parade of touristy
17th-century taverns props up what must be the classic cutaway cross section
of Auld Reekie — smoke-grey tenements rising in steep columns to the cragtop
castle above.
The pick of them is the Last Drop (74-78 Grassmarket), named for its
grandstand view of the gallows that used to stand outside on the square.
Dangling with kitsch clutter, the pub features fakey beams, fakey
wood-burner, fakey sconces — pretty much everything is fake, in fact, except
the atmosphere, provided by a feisty ragbag of regulars, rugger-buggers and
visitors.
Need to pace yourself? Order a Pooh Bear, frothed milk with honey and nutmeg —
which sounds like ideal stomach-lining material. The other signature drink
is the Executioner’s Cocktail, a throat-clenching combo of strong ale and
cider — which sounds like bad noose.
Just round the corner, garrulous Grassmarket turns into dapper Victoria
Street, where your next stop fits beautifully into the Old Town’s quaintest
shopping quarter: there’s Halibut and Herring, for handmade soaps; Anta, for
rugs and throws; Iain Mellis, for posh cheeses; and the Bow Bar (80 West
Bow), for whisky. This impeccably frill-free saloon serves 200 malts,
according to Brian the barman, and it’s a wonder they can fit them all
inside. The small rectangular room is always busy with bodies, the sort of
place where you prop yourself against the fireplace, nursing their “malt of
the moment”, and set about meeting a dozen new friends.
I met a crumpled chap named Kieran, who said, “This was Camra’s Edinburgh Pub
of the Year last year, but I think it’s the best in the world.” And I
thought to myself: for somebody who’s completely trolleyed, he’s not far
wrong.
Next, climb the alley steps opposite towards the castle and join the strolling
masses on the Royal Mile. Across Lawnmarket, in the bowels of a shadowy
close, presides the Jolly Judge (7 James Court), Edinburgh’s consummate
cellar bar. Notorious as a den of political intriguing in the early days of
the Scottish parliament, this is another “push back the stools and talk”
place: wedge into one of its love seats and you could be seduced into
staying all night. If you do end up sozzled and supine here, the timber
ceiling is great for staring at: salvaged from a painted 18th-century
galleon, it’s ripe with scarlet cherries and golden pineapples.
Late at night, the Old Town can get leery, so swerve across the green gulch of
Princes Street Gardens into the New Town — “new” because it was first laid
out in 1766. You’re heading for a duo of architectural bobbydazzlers here:
first, the Dome (14 George Street), a converted banking hall frequented by
the movers and cocktail-shakers of professional Edinburgh. It’s sheer
opulence — Corinthian columns, lily-stuffed vases, bow-tied bar staff — all
under a cavernous stained-glass dome. Imagine a cathedral designed by
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and you won’t be far out.
Every bit as refined is the Cafe Royal (17 West Register Street), just across
St Andrew Square. It’s a masterpiece of Victorian baroque: marquetry,
mirrors and marble, with a glittery bar in the centre that I like to think
glides up nightly from the cellar, like a Wurlitzer organ.
By this hour, any piped music here will be drowned out by the clatter of
affluent conversation: order half a dozen oysters and one last dram, admire
the giant Royal Doulton murals depicting famous inventors in their eureka
moment — and toast your night on the tiles.
The morning after: jump on the No 41 bus to Crammond from Princes
Street, and 30 minutes later you’ll be beside the Firth of Forth, gulping
sea air and tucking into a Maureen’s Melt from the tearoom — bacon soaked in
balsamic, with cheese and a fried egg. Hangover? What hangover?
Where to stay: Ten Hill Place (0131 662 2080, www.tenhillplace.com
) is a tidy new four-star hotel within staggering distance of the Royal
Mile; weekend doubles start at £122, B&B. VC
