St. Patrick's Day

It appears that I have gotten a bit behind in my blog...I'm sure all of you were just sitting on edge waiting for my next entry so I'm sorry I kept you in suspense. I thought today I'd fill everyone in on St. Patrick's Day in Dublin and show you how the holiday is really celebrated! First of all, I'd like to complain that the weather on St. Patrick's Day weekend was not even close to ideal and that it prevented me from finding the motivation to leave my apartment more than once. March is turning out to be rainier than February and that is really disappointing...

So we'll start out on Sunday, the eve of St. Patrick's Day. During the day I took a trip to the city center by myself and just spent hours walking around and people watching. It was pretty amusing because all the tourist were wearing ridiculous costumes and were usually pretty drunk. The part I liked the most about the city center walk was Grafton Street. The street is usually really busy with shoppers and street performers, but for St. Patrick's Day the street performers went all out. I saw a professional string quartet, really good trad performers, tons of fake statue people, and then some really random balloon and clown acts. It took me such a long time to walk down the street because I kept stopping and watching all the great performers! Later that night I went out to the city center with my roommates and some friends and celebrated with a bunch of tourists and some locals. We ended up going to the Porterhouse Bar in Temple Bar and it was packed. I'm pretty sure any pub I walked by all weekend was full no matter what time of the day it was so I was expecting some huge crowds at night. Porterhouse turned out to be pretty lively and I really enjoyed myself. There was a live band playing and tons of fun decorations which really put us in the St. Patty's mood. After a late night out on Sunday I woke up relatively early the next day to start my real St. Patrick's Day festivities.

My plan for St. Patrick's Day morning/early afternoon was to walk from the last LUAS stop (St. Stephen's Green) which is just south of the city center to Croke Park, which is pretty far north of the city center. This walk turned out to be quite the difficult adventure, because crowds around the parade in the city center were absolutely crazy! I barely could see any of the parade as we walked by and people were on roofs, street lamps, and statues attempting to get a glance. From the glimpses I caught the parade seemed pretty amazing- very colorful and surprisingly tropical. As we made our way through the crowds we navigated the windy north Dublin streets and finally arrived at Croke Park. Croke Park is an enormous outdoor stadium that was built by the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) to house club and county games for hurling and Gaelic Football. The stadium just finished 10 years of ongoing construction and is pretty impressive now for a sports league that isn't professional. We showed up for the All Ireland Club Finals in Hurling and Gaelic Football and were really surprised how many people were at the stadium. It turns out that one of the Gaelic Football teams, St. Vincent's, was a Dublin Club team so that brought a lot of fans in. My overall perception of Irish games are that they make American athletes look like complete pansies. Hurling is a game that requires the use of a small softball like ball that's as hard as a rock and hurlies (wooden paddles), It's pretty hard to explain the game without watching a match, but I can tell you that there were plenty injuries and a lot of blood- so it was a great game! The next game we watched was the Gaelic Football game, which I'm not even going to try to explain- check out a clip on u tube or something. After we watched these games we were freezing and tired and we headed back to the apartment.

That night some of my roommates went down to the city center to check out some pubs, I didn't feel up to it so I just stayed in and celebrated a quiet St. Patrick's Day. I know you are very disappointed that I was lame and didn't go out, but my night before is going to count as my Patty's Day experience. It turns out that the city center was absolutely crazy and it wasn't that fun anyway. There were fights breaking out between teenagers (lame), bodily fluids being projected in many directions, and huge crowds of drunken crazies. Sorry to disappoint, but it sounds like the weekend leading up to the actual holiday is way better than the holiday itself. Good to know though if I'm ever back here for the holiday again!