Temple Bar

DUBLIN: Liam arrived a day after me, and as soon as he did we set out in search of Temple Bar, for, yes, a nice pint of Guinness. As you can probably see in the photos, I’d bought myself an Irish hat – Liam already owned one. While wearing it, I suddenly thought of all those tourists in Australia who wear Aussie hats – thus it was in Dublin; no Dubliner under sixty actually wears these hats any more.

Funnily enough, when crossing the Liffey, a well-lubricated Irishman remarked as he passed, ‘Like your hats boys’. Of course, knowing from our own culture that he was more than likely taking the piss, we were quite surprised when, a few stumbles later, he wheeled around, as we did, and repeated as sincerely he could manage, ‘No, I really do like your hats. We used to wear those y’know! We used to wear those!’

Though this guy was harmless, I must say, I found the rowdiness of some of the revelers, not so much in Temple Bar but in the pubs around the train station where I spent my first night, on my own, a bit much on occasions. From the doors of almost every pub I visited there spewed forth at least one, if not five burly red faced men, sweating Guinness, intent on picking a fight with a lamppost. After forty eight hours, I realized that this probably goes a long way to explaining where the ‘Aussie bloke’ gets his, um, style (and I’ve been known to be included in this category at times).

Temple Bar itself (well, not the bar, but the pub and club district) is, it must be said, more like a theme park than a clutch of authentic Irish bars. Oh, and teeming with tourists, such as ourselves. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any traditional music, which Liam was searching for, and which I couldn’t seem to avoid the night before – unless by traditional music you mean the Counting Crows and The Proclaimers.