St. Patrick’s Day

I have a handful of good memories of St. Patrick’s day while I was growing up but to me it had always been an adult’s holiday. This being because of the drinking and the fact that just about every year my parents would go into New York City to see the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Even when I was at college last year it wasn’t a huge thing. Then I came to Ireland.

University was closed yesterday. All the schools were closed for the holiday. That is the first big difference between here and America. This is also huge because this semester St. Patrick’s Day is the only holiday I have outside of spring break. When in Ireland you’ve got to do St. Patrick’s Day the Irish way.

So my brother, Spencer, and I got a bus to Dublin. What better way to spend St. Patrick’s Day then in the capitol! We got there and found food before hunting down the parade… unfortunately we only saw the end of it… but we were in Dublin. I did manage to snag a few photos

 

I think it was worth going just to see everyone dressed up. People had on the Leprechaun hats and beard. Some wore the Irish flag like a cape. Lots of people had the Irish flag painted on their cheek. And there were any number of other outrageous get ups. What I noticed was that yes there’s a lot of green, but there was a heck of a lot more Irish flags and orange. In America, as you probably know, St. Patrick’s Day = green. Here St. Patrick’s Day is everything Irish.

^Like this Pub so many Irish flags!^

I Skyped my mum today and she asked if we had corn beef and cabbage yesterday. And I realized that was another huge difference. In America corn beef and cabbage is THE “Irish” dish of St. Patrick’s Day. While I walked around yesterday on all of the pub daily special boards I didn’t see one hint of corn beef and cabbage. There were a lot of Irish Stews and Sausage specials but no corn beef and cabbage.

Since we were in Dublin and the most Irish thing we could think of was Guinness we decided to tour the Guinness factory!

^Me in a bunch of barley^

^that be hops behind me^

^the sacred Guinness yeast^

I think the highlight of the day was while in the factory we got to pour our own pints! The guy instructed us how to do it properly and… I felt sooooo cool pouring it! 

And check me out with my certificate saying that I did it!!

After the factory we walked back toward the bus station along the Liffey river.

Got treats then caught the bus home. Over all I would say the day was AMAZING!!! And it was even better that Spencer was here!!

Cheers,