St. Patrick's Day!

There couldn't have been a better place to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than here in Ireland! All of our friends, (probably about 30 of us), woke up early and caught the train to Dublin to watch the St. Patty's Day parade, and then go pub hopping.

This is a great picture of most of the group. We were waiting for about 5 other people who missed the first train. As you can see most of us invested in hair dye, makeup, and silly hats. In my captions with friends I'll include in parenthesis their nationalities, because one of my favorite things about this group is all of the different countries and cultures that are represented.

Just off the train. Took a few minutes to realize we were missing some people.

Here is Ben (France), Me, Meagan D., and Megan R.

Me, Tom and Michael (both from France), Meagan D., and Megan R.

The three M's.

Probably the best candid shot ever.

Daniel (Austria) has a little something extra going on with his glove...sneaky!

Here are a series of photos from the parade. All-in-all the parade was actually kind of disappointing. It was slow moving, big gaps in between people, floats, and bands walking through, not much music. It was fun with our group, but I think that even the parades through Coldwater keep an audience's attention better.
Some of the floats built were very cool though, as you will see:

The parade began with the releasing of green balloons all down the main street.

Ben and Andrea (both France), Pauline and Daniel (France, Austria) waiting for the parade to start!

It was pretty funny that we didn't have any Irish person in our group. Not one. I have plenty of Irish friends, and I know that one of the girls is even dating an Irish boy, but it just worked out that no one could say "Kiss me, I'm Irish!"
As you can see, Andrea (France) improvised on her forehead.

Ben and Michael (France) before the parade.

Alfredo (Italy) on Hendrik (Germany). Because there was a pretty big crowd, this was the best way for anyone to see if the parade was coming our way. If you got closer to the street at all you had to be shoulder-to-shoulder and front-to-back in order to fit. If you weren't squished, you were pushed by others until you were.

Tom (France) and Me.

I loved this little boy. He was absolutely adorable. He was standing in front of us during the parade.

Hendrik (Germany) is quite tall. Ben brought me a cookie from the market while we were waiting for the parade. As soon as I took a bite the sun disappeared and I was cloaked in a dark shadow. I looked straight up only to see Hendrik looking down right into my face.
"Hey Hendrik," I smiled, "how's it going up there?"
"Give me half of that cookie or I will kill you!"
I laughed pretty hard. Then shared my cookie. He was nice to me all day after that.

Ben (France) and I waiting for the parade to start.

One of the cooler series of floats were these enormous bugs. Underneath the bugs were people on bicycle contraptions pedaling and pulling rods that controlled all legs, arms, and feelers. It was very cool. This one was my favorite, although there was also a dragonfly, ant,
and a creepy spider.

There was a huge chicken that came by, and a group of women dressed like chickens, then some man rapping about "hens in the hen house."

One of the first parts of the parade to pass by was a bunch of eggs with legs being chased by chefs with huge egg beaters. I thought this was hilarious!

You may be asking yourselves at this point "Where are the leprechauns? Where is the green? What do any of these parade attractions have to do with St. Patrick's Day or Ireland?"
The answer is that there are none, there was none, and they have nothing to do with it. The closest we had was that there was a man dressed as St. Patrick who walked by in sunglasses. Beyond that the closest theme we could think of was a picnic or a children's show.

Hendrik (Germany) saw St. Patrick walking around on the other side of the street and started shouting "The Pope! It's the Pope! Come over here to bless me!!"

We tried to explain to him who it was once we recognized it, but it quickly became clear that he knew the whole time it was St. Patrick, and simply felt like yelling that it was the pope. He was the tallest, so we didn't see attractions coming until after he did. He enjoyed this, so he proceeded to should that the Mayor, Shrek, and George Clooney were all coming. Shrek actually did come by, but we soon learned that Hendrik was shouting that about a policeman walking by at the time.

We settled into a pub that was a short walk from our spot at the parade. We had been there once before, and it was an incredible place! Not much to look at on the outside, but the inside was all old wood, chandeliers, and large, beautiful staircases. The pub was about 4 stories tall with balconies looking down to other floors, and even live music playing up from the bottom.

And here is a quick shot of my face taken at the pub early in the day.

It was an incredible St. Patrick's Day, and I'll never forget how I got to celebrate it in The Emerald Isle.

Sláinte.