The Ring of Kerry, the Connemara peninsula, fields of verdant green and dramatic cliffs, mystic loughs, splendid castles converted into dramatic hotels, Irish stew, Guinness pie and Guinness beer (worshiped by Catholics and Protestants alike), fiddle and guitar music, spilling out from a warmly lit pub. I fully agree with Anthony Bourdain’s saying that there was really no better place on this earth than a good pub. Albeit there were many reasons to visit Ireland, mine was different. Collaborating with 10 friends from my New York times we were throwing a bachelor party for my best New York buddy who was about to marry the beautiful daughter of a famous plastic surgeon from Florida. Ireland was determined as bachelor party venue as the Emerald Isle lay in the middle (well, more or less…) between the party guests joining from the US and the ones joining from Europe. Instead of a village pub we rented a house boat on the Shannon and turned it into a floating pub. As the bachelor’s hunting behaviour had been famous for its privilege for blond women all guests dressed accordingly. For a full weekend we floated as a kinda blond dollhouse through the serene waterways of the Shannon, through lush countryside and past historical towns great for stocking up on Guiness and Irish whiskey, It was wonderful to be young, drunken and crazy. Drunkenness led to twists and turns and maybe they were resembling the twists and turns of Leopold Bloom, principal character of Ulysses, the greatest novel of Irish literature.