Galway International Oyster Festival

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So technically the Oyster Festival was September 25th-28th but life has been a little busy as you can well imagine. So, every year people from around the world flock to Galway to witness the International Oyster Festival, which is centered around the Oyster Opening Competition and Pearl Competition. The Oyster Opening Competition is exactly what it sounds like. Every participating country competes to find the fastest oyster opener and then they come to Galway to find the worldwide champion. The Pearl competition is a beauty pageant to decide who is the “Pearl” of the festival, not nearly as much fun as the Oyster Opening Competition.

On the first night of the festival, everyone flocks to the King’s Head Pub in Galway and witnesses the best of Ireland’s oyster openers. Brian and I of course went to see what all the hubbub was about. We ran into people from England, Spain, the US, and a few other countries in which the languages were unidentifiable . . . so truly, an international event. We ended up hanging out with a group of guys from London whose boss had bought tables and tickets for them all to attend the festivities. There were three heats of qualifiers from Ireland who all got up and raced to open 25 oysters as fast as humanly possible while the crowd cheered and yelled for their favorites. It was hilarious! We drank Guinness and tasted all the opened oysters (well I did, just a tiny bit, I can only eat my Dad’s barbequed oysters so fresh oysters were not a pleasant taste for me. On a side note, when I eat oysters, all I can think of is the “Friends” episode where Joey thinks he slipped on a “giant booger,” hence my dislike of oysters.)

Anyhoo, a guy nicknamed Beano won and we all cheered and took pictures with him and the Pearl. It was a grand ole time. The next day was the opening ball and seeing that Brian and I are still on a budget, we did not attend (another side note → at some point in my lifetime I will attend a “Ball.” Hopefully a masquerade ball with big, fancy, poofy dresses.) The day after the ball was the parade and the eating of the first oyster by the Grand Marshall. The parade was actually very cool with all of the Oyster Openers from around the world marching with bands, kids dressed as oysters, kids dressed as seagulls, and many fancy cards filled with seemingly important people. The Oyster Opener from the US looked like he was plucked straight out of North Beach. People walked behind the parade, filling the streets, all the way down to the pier where another evening of drinking, dancing, and festivities took place. Again, Brian and I could not attend the rest of the festivities due to lack of expenses, but the parts of the weekend we could attend were fabulous!

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Comments

[Cher]

seagull?
Haha, I love that seagulls are incorporated into the oyster festivities... is that just because where there's seafood, there's seagulls? ha =)