St. Patrick's Day spent in Dublin was something I had been looking forward to ever since I knew I'd be studying here in Ireland! Its one of those ultimate travelers bucket list items-rights of passage-need to do before you die-sorts of things. Right up there in the ranks with Oktoberfest in Germany, Holi festival in India, and carnival in Rio de Janerio. We had been seeing crazy tourists walking around all week dressed as leprechauns and wearing Irish flags all over their bodies, so naturally we decided we needed to join the crowd. Because, well, when it comes to holidays we're definitely still tourists. What would St. Paddy's be without the getup?The day started out by getting in costume...matching shirts, shamrock antennae, and temporary tattoos galore! Next we headed into city centre for the parade (which we unfortunately saw absolutely none of because we hadn't accounted for the city buses being MIA and roads being blocked off). Instead, we grabbed our first pint of the day and watched the parade on a pub TV. Ya know, real authentic stuff right there ;)
After that we headed to Croke Park to watch the all Ireland club football
and hurling senior championship finals! We were lucky enough that Alex was able to bring us along for the event, and it was lots of fun to watch. I had never watched hurling or Irish football before so it was a great! As the sun went down, the historic city buildings and monuments were lit up in green, and absolute mayhem ensued on the streets. Our last planned event of the day was a musical performance in Dublin Castle. Tickets were free, and we had no idea what the performances would be like. It was much more mellow than expected, but a nice respite from the craziness of the city for a little while. Afterwards, Jordan and I met up with Avril and Rebecca at the Porterhouse and we spent the rest of Paddy's Day dancing the night away!
Our final hurrah was almost-sucessfully being snuck into a secret underground Irish speaking bar. Accordion, our trusty Irish friend, brought Jordan and I below street level to an unlit, unmarked, unsubstantial door which he then applied a secret knock. Apparently only Irish is spoken in this particular secret pub, no English allowed. As we descended the stairs, Accordion told Jordan and I something along the lines of..."Don't worry, if anyone tries to talk to you, just say ashasha mumhamem galmahaha."
Obviously it was just gibberish to Jordan and my ears, and as we don't
speak a lick of Irish (nevermind the fact that we'd had a fair bit of drink by this time), we knew we would never pass for Irish unless the
magic word was "slàinte." After the super secret knock, when the doorman opened up, Accordion spoke some sort of "password" in Irish to gain admittance. Miraculously though, no one spoke to Jordan and I at all! Although we only stayed for about five minutes before we felt too awkward trying not to speak English loud enough for anyone to notice that one of these things is not like the others. Leading up to the day of, my Irish friends kept warning me that it would be a proverbial shit-show, and not to get my hopes up too much. They were right about the shit-show part...I don't know if I've ever seen so many day-drunk people in my entire life...or so many people heading home by 9:00 pm because they had been drinking since 9:00 am...but regardless I can confidently say that Paddy's day in Dublin was one of my favorite days in Ireland so far!
Definitely one for the books :)
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