Portstewart







Portstewart is a small town on the north coast of Northern Ireland. The town belongs to the so-called Coleraine Triangle, which is the area between Coleraine, Portrush and Portstewart. To the right you can see the view from Portstewart strand on the town. On a sunny day, a walk along the strand is wonderful! The strand is about three miles long; in the summer time it is packed with cars for Irish people obviously don't walk if they are not forced to. There is a British TV advertising which suggests people to "go walking". On the other hand, I've never seen as many joggers as on Portstewart strand on a fine morning or evening.







Portstewart is a typical Irish sea resort. The Promenade forms the heart of the town. Here you can find several shops, banks, a variety of restaurants and fast food shops and of course the obligatory Irish pubs. Especially on the weekends a walk along the Prom is quite nice and interesting. Again, you can see masses of cars parking along the promenade with families inside, eating their cake or ice cream, reading the newspaper or just staring on the sea for hours.
The most interesting places are definitely Portstewart's many pubs and bars. The Anchor is a must know for everybody who is new in town. It is the bar where all the locals meet on Friday and Saturday nights. So if you want to get to know the Portstewart people, just go and sit at the bar in the Anchor for a couple of pints. The pub is actually rather old fashioned and very small. I always wondered why it was exactly this pub where everybody met, it's not even especially comfortable. Quite on the contrary, on Friday nights for instance you can't even get a place to sit if you don't go there before nine o'clock. Students like the pub since there is a club upstairs the Anchor. The music is bad but all students go there on Thursday nights. There are busses from the Unibar to the Anchor on that night. The students get drunk in the campus pub for alcohol is much cheaper there, and at eleven pm the busses go to the Anchor where people get really pissed. The students' life is really quite ritualised in that regard. On certain nights of the week the uni-busses go to certain pubs or clubs of the area. The worst night is Wednesday night - Kelly's night. Kelly's is a large club in Portrush with Techno music on three floors. On that night all the other pubs and clubs in the area are really empty. Only some international students, especially Germans who preferred a nice quiet conversation :), spent their Wednesday nights in The Anchor or at O'Hara's.






O'Hara's is a nice little pub upstairs Bar7, which used to be Stafford's when I lived there. The pub is much more comfortable than The Anchor. This may be the reason why many international students preferred to go there. On the other hand O'Hara's is often very quiet, a little bit boring, maybe. It is really the ideal place to meet people you really want to talk to and also understand what they are telling you. There used to be live music at O'Hara's on Thursday nights. On the picture below you can see "Frankie and Johnny" singing. Frankie Sewell is a teacher at Coleraine University and he is a really good musician too. They are playing evergreens and new rock and pop stuff. Well, now the pub owner put a pool table at the place where the musicians used to sit. I went to O'Hara's again last November and we were the only people in the pub...obviously it was a bad idea to cancel the live music. Anyway, if you want to hear Frankie&Johnny playing you can go to The Anchor on Mondays and to Rogue's in Portrush on Wednesdays. Actually you should go there!!! ;)









For those who prefer traditional Irish music the Montague Arms may be the better pub to go. Twice a month or so they organize traditional Irish music sessions there. I have to admit that I never went to one of those sessions but other international students told me that they always liked them very much. Otherwise Montague's is a rather ugly pub similar to the Anchor. Its only advantage is the late bar. Almost all pubs in the area close at 1 am, so late bars are the only possibility to stay in a pub for longer. The Anchorage (beside the Anchor) is another one of those late bars. Try to get in there before 12 o'clock, otherwise you'll have to know some of the locals to get passed the security men outside the Anchorage.
Well, so much for the pubs. Much more difficult than to get a cold drink is to find a good place to eat. There is an Indian restaurant in Portstewart but it is really expensive although quite good. Another restaurant is between Portstewart and Portrush. Otherwise you'll have to frequent one of the several fast food shops at the Promnade. Super Frie, beside the Anchorage, is the most frequented one, especially around 1 am when all the pubs close. Here you get all the usual British stuff: burgers, fish&chips and so on. On the other side of the road there is an Asian fast food shop and beside Bar7 a Subway opened some months ago. This is all not very recommendable...TRY SELFCATERING!!!