So last night, A– and I returned to Westport. We were both in bad moods; she’s been on the road a lot longer than I have been but even just a week has been wearing me a bit thin. And both of us miss our significant others. We checked in to our B&B, and I told her to take an hour in the room to herself so that she could call her SO, while I went to the restaurant downstairs to get a Guinness and do some reading.

At 8:30, A– shows up at my table, looking crazed. "Did you get in touch with C–?" I asked her. She replied, "Do I look like someone who’s gotten in touch with C–?" In the fourteen years that I’ve known her, I’ve learned that when A– gets like this, the best thing to do is just go with the flow. I started to make some smart-ass comeback remark, but she interrupted me: "And don’t even tell me you don’t know what someone who has talked to C– looks like, because it’s not funny!." She sat down and ordered us a couple more pints of Guinness.

After commisserating for a few minutes I asked her what she wanted to do. I said, "If worse comes to worst, we could always just go back to our room and watch television."

"Do you really want to do that?"

"Hell no," I replied. "We’re in Ireland. Let’s go wander the streets and see what happens. Maybe we’ll get lucky."

We left the pub and started wandering around. We finally happened upon a pub in downtown Westport called Matt Malloy’s. This pub is owned by Matt Malloy himself. Matt Malloy, in case you don’t know, is the flautist for the great Irish band The Chieftains, specializing in traditional Irish music. We stepped inside and it was crowded. We went to the back room and settled in for a bit, watching an older man, probably in his sixties, singing traditional Irish folk songs (as well as some new ones, like "My Girlfriend’s Got a Mobile Phone") and chatting with some other guys who turned out to be programmers from Dublin. It was turning out to be a great evening.

But then P–, one of the guys we were talking to, glanced up and said, "Uh oh." He stood up and said to A–, "In a few seconds, the owner will be sitting right next to you." A– said, "No way!", but a few moments later, an older gentleman carrying a flute sat down right next to us, along with a man with a fiddle, another one with a guitar, and a third carrying his bodhain. The flautist turned out to be none other than Matt Malloy himself. He shook our hands, introduced himself, and began to play.

A– rushed back to our B&B to pick up her own guitar and returned a few minutes later. People in Ireland treat musicians well; A– was allowed to pass through the crowd easily when she carried her guitar case, but it was a battle to get out of the pub to get back to our B&B in the first place.

There are some times when I wish that I played a musical instrument (I don’t usually; usually, I’m content to listen and appreciate); last night was one of them. But as I listened to these great musicians, including one of the best Irish flute players in the world, I was swept away and enthralled. "This," I thought, as the music swelled and I was crowded by people behind me and breathing in clouds of cigarrette smoke and joking with P– next to me, "is what I came to Ireland for."

The session lasted a couple of hours, but it felt like ten minutes. Never have I enjoyed a live performance so much, or enjoyed being in the company of strangers so much. At midnight, the pub started shutting down, and A– wanted to leave while the music was still happening in order to have the memory. I thought it was a good plan, so we left and returned to the B&B.

This morning, the mood that hung over me last night has returned. I awoke thinking of Jennifer and called her at about 1:30 a.m. her time and nearly broke down on the phone with her. I’ve got to wash my clothes, I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to get around Europe when A– heads off to Iceland (not Norway, as I’d originally thought she was doing) this Friday, and figure out how to keep my sanity while traveling alone for the two weeks after that. I’m hungry, I have a headache, and I miss Jennifer more than words can possibly say.
But the magic that filled Matt Malloy’s pub for me last night will never fade away; and I knew as we left the pub that this would be my fondest memory of my entire trip.