The St. Patrickans

Our friends love us and came to see us! My little Cork crowd had company last week and it was SUPER exciting to see familiar faces on our side of the pond. We decided there was no better way to introduce them to life in Ireland then by taking them to Dublin for St Patrick’s Day weekend. Crazy? Yes. Completely memorable? Most definitely. I’m more in love with Dublin then ever before- however, I’m discovering an odd dislike for tourists. I say odd because I guess I am technically a tourist, it’s just that I don’t feel like one so much anymore. I’m not sure when this dislike for tourists started, or why, but I’m not a fan of the massive hordes of people who spilled into Ireland this week. The walk from the Abbey Street Luas stop to Nassau Street told twice as long as usual, the line at the Guinness factory probably stretched at least 5 miles (hooray for knowing how to cut it), and AIB stopped traffic on Grafton Street with their huge moving advertisement which all the tourists then stopped traffic to gawk at.
But anyway…the moment you’ve all been waiting for, just how crazy is St Patrick’s day in Dublin? Well, first of all the Paddy’s day parade is apparently “just for tourists and kids” ouch. Let down number one. And apparently the Irish don’t necessarily wear green on St Patrick’s Day. Let down number two. But, however touristy the parade is, Paddy’s day is still a full on, banks closed, no classes, no work, and sure as heck no postal service holiday in Ireland. So that does mean the Irish celebrate in full force. It’s a little tough to come up with an appropriately edited summation of our Paddy’s day that won’t embarrass anyone too terribly. (Considering that even that little bit of legal jargon embarrasses me!) But I’ll give it a shot.
Touristy as it may be we went to the parade decked out in green with shamrocks painted on our faces and some truly stylish green hats. (I was told by an Irish person later in the night that I should really just take the hat off and abandon it somewhere.) After the parade we hiked over to Croke Park (a short walk when the parade isn’t going on, but when it becomes impossible to cross one of Dublin’s main streets due to the parade the walk to Croke Park becomes a very long one.) We got to see the club hurling finals and the club Gaelic football finals. So because we sprinted to the stadium and then saw two different sports I’m dubbing it the Croke Park Triathlon. Oh, and yes. The former yearbook person in me snuck out and I took a million pictures of the hurling and Gaelic football. After the match we made our way to “Ireland’s oldest pub” where we met everyone from a 40 year old from Florida to some 20 something attorneys from Dublin. And of course we spent a fair part of the evening laughing at the crazy St Patrickans (Beth’s term, thanks Beth!).
Besides the Paddy’s day silliness that took over Ireland our friends got to see a lot of Dublin (I’ve become a pretty good Dublin tour guide since my last adventure to Ireland’s fair city.) I managed to cram the Guinness Factory, the Jameson Distillery, Dublin Writer’s museum, Garden of Remembrance, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, a whole lot of shopping and of course our favorite Dublin pubs and restaurants into two very touristy days – so no matter what “setbacks” we may have had, we still managed to see and do a ton. More updates to come, I'm just all typed out of the night, so stay tuned!