The Perfect Pint of Guinness

I will admit that Guinness is an acquired taste, one that I acquired relatively late in life. My first pub visits involved so-so glasses of wine with an occasional wimpy "glass" of Guinness, just to be polite. But as my pub experiences grew, so did my appreciation of the "mother's milk" of Ireland.

One perfect pint was drunk in The Plough, across the street from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, listening to the crowd sing along to "Song for Ireland."

Another perfect pint was drunk in a restaurant with a group of friends we had just met that day, eating, laughing, and finally becoming silent as one of our party told a story.

The night we went to Matt Malloy's in Westport was also a night of the perfect pint; we sat with a couple down from Derry, Anne Marie and her cousin Tom. We laughed and drank; Anne Marie told our fortunes. When we followed them out the door at the end of that evening, they had disappeared just as good leprechauns should do.

A rainy night in Ballyvaughan saw our family in O'Neill's, waiting for our friends Ron and Lisa to arrive. Our Becky started chatting up the locals, making the rounds with her digital camera. The pictures from that night are filled with laughter, delight and love.

The perfect pint might come from a bottle on a hot afternoon or from a tap in our own "local," but the truth is, what makes it perfect is the place and people surrounding it.