The Chronicles of The Good Doctor: Ooooh, Those Irish Niiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhhhts

Below are some thoughts and experiences from the three nights we spent in Dublin.

— One of the great things in Dublin is its downtown district. We stayed at a hostel along the River Liffey. A block away was the Temple Bar, which is actually an area and not just one bar. Think of it like Times Square meets O Street. It had dozens of restaurants and pub after pub.

— One of the great things about these pubs were they stayed open late (2:30 a.m.) and many featured house bands every night. In addition to being schooled in traditional Irish music, they knew a lot of other classic songs. For example, we heard "Losing My Religion" by REM, "American Pie" by Don McLean, and Metalica's "Whiskey in the Jar."

With the bands playing in the background, every now and then a little Irish dance-off would develop. Think Riverdance, but three feet from you. Sorry for the darkness of this video and the sideways flip during the middle of it, but hopefully, you can get the idea.

— Our Fourth of July celebrations started after midnight on Thursday. We ran into several Americans at a pub and gave each other toasts to our superiority over the British. Also, we ran into many Canadians, who seemed unimpressed with our celebrations. Later that evening some of the members of our group who had a little more beverages decided it would be a good idea to sing "Proud to be an American" and the "Star-Spangled Banner" I decided it would be a good idea to walk faster to get away from them.

On Friday, we all went out for the Fourth and ate dinner at a boxty restaurant (think wraps with pancakes). Then it was off for a night on the town. We went to one pub, which was actually older than America, and started the night off in style. As you can see from the picture to the left, we decided to express our American attitude with popped collars. Although no one had a Jaeger bomb, we still got our drink on. For some reason, the natives thought we looked really funny with our popped collars and stared at us as we took the picture.

While I do not think the Irish give two licks about the Fourth, I believe they like the idea of the holiday. Here in Ireland, they do not care for the British one bit. (See: The Troubles, and War for Independence) So I think the general idea is that Irish like the Fourth of July because we stick it to Great Britain. However, I saw no outward signs of this affection. No one bought anyone in our group drinks. Instead, we bought ourselves drinks. As you can see below, we did a shot of tequila to celebrate the Fourth because nothing says American like drinking a Mexican liqueur.

— Another running joke of our running jokes started on the Fourth (for previous jokes, see Duffy, Patrick). Because we were feeling quite libelous and independent on the fourth, we took a page from the pages of history and began to dream of Manifest Destiny. Our original table was too small and we need to expand. In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, we decided to Manifest Destiny another table next to us. (Thus turning the phrase into a verb). From then on whenever we took something over moved into a new territory we were Manifesting our Destiny. Feel free to use this in your daily life.

— One random thought: Unlike the states, Dublin is the singular destination for bachelor parties in Ireland. In the states, if you are getting hitched in Nebraska, you could go to Omaha, Lincoln or even Fremont. In Ireland, go to the Temple Bar area of town. They don’t just drive in; they fly in too. When I was at the Dublin airport, I saw two different groups. Friday night in Dublin we ran into no less than seven bachelorette parties and two bachelor parties. Included in the sights were pirates (YARGH!), a rugby team, pink cowboys and several others.

— A parting shot from the end of one of the nights. The dude has a Guinness on his head.