New activity: Irish music

Extending our enjoyment of Irish entertainment, we headed off to The Celt Irish Pub in McKinney to hear the TIMES (Traditional Irish Music Education Society) Session Players perform. The afternoon we were there they had a fabulous quintet, consisting of a fiddle, banjo, guitar, Irish flute and a bodhran.

The latter was something new to us and we had to look it up to find out its name. Interestingly, the bodhran is a traditional Celtic frame drum considered to be the heartbeat of Irish music. We thoroughly enjoyed the music – and our food and beverages. We split corned beef and cabbage eggrolls (amazing!) and Barbara chose to wash it all down with a Guinness Irish Stout, while Laura went wild with a “Slippery Deck” (blend of spiced rum and coconut rum with fruit flavored schnapps and pineapple, orange and cranberry juice).  Topping off the experience was discovering that The Celt Irish Pub’s current location was actually a brothel in the late 1800s.

New activity: Personal Indulgences

McKinney has such a great downtown area that we just had to browse a few shops after leaving The Celt Irish Pub. Laura has a donkey hand puppet that always makes her smile (it’s his teeth) so she knew she had to buy the twin donkeys sketch and Barbara heeded her love of pithy sayings on towels. It was a fun way to indulge our idiosyncrasies!