God Bless St. Paddy!

Last Friday was the coldest St. Patrick's Day since 1979 apparently and boy did we feel it! However, as it was my first St. Patrick's Day spent in Ireland (this time last year I was on holiday at home!), I was determined to take part in as many of the festivities as possible.

The Wednesday before Paddy's Day marked the opening of the celebrations in Smithfield with a free, and quite impressive, acrobatic show where the acrobats (over from Spain) performed their feats whilst attached to a globe hung high up in the air. Amazing to watch although we wished it could be a little warmer as we got the occasional rain and hail shower whilst standing in the crowd.



The majority of people get a day off work on the actual St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, so Johnny and I headed down early to Dame Street to secure ourselves a good parade-watching spot. Although we got there about an hour and a half before the parade was due to reach that spot, there were still tonnes of people already braving the cold. The atmosphere was great with most people dressed up in green, white and gold, ribbons and funny hats everywhere! The parade lasted for another good hour and a half with all sorts of fantastical creations dancing down the street. The reactions from all the children gathered to watch was amusing and the crowds managed to take most of the cold away although we were shocked when we spotted some parade dancers strutting their stuff in skimpy bikinis! They would have had to be completely numb by the time they reached us!



That afternoon we witnessed one of the largest Ceilis in Ireland. For those of you who don't know what a Ceili is, it is a big party where everyone does what can only be described as Irish folk dancing to the infectious Irish music. It is great fun and you don't have to know any of the dances as the MC leads everyone through them at the beginning of each one.



Of course one of the biggest traditions of St. Patrick's Day is to have a drink (or three or four...) in a pub so we didn't disappoint there! We met up with our friends Erin, Craig, Becs and Tony and a whole heap of their mates and compared stories of the day over a few pints.



On Saturday we enjoyed the exciting 6 Nations Rugby at Paddy Cullen's pub in Ballsbridge. Unusually for a group of rugby spectators, it ended up being Johnny and about 12 girls in our group! It was great craic though with our lovely Canadian Erin providing us with the half-time entertainment - seeing how many peanuts she could fit in her mouth at once!! (68 for those who are interested!)

After the excitement of Ireland winning the Triple Crown award and just narrowly missing out on becoming 6 Nations Champs, Johnny and I headed out to Tiger Becks restaurant for an expensive meal for two courtesy of Johnny's boss who had given Johnny the voucher for all his good work so far. Thanks!

On Sunday the Paddy's Day celebrations were still continuing so we headed out to Merrion Square where there was a fun-fair. Although it was mainly aimed at children, we are big kids at heart so we enjoyed the fun atmosphere and wished we were small enough to take part in some of the activities! However we couldn't shrink so we had to be content with our free hot-dog and drink courtesy of Denny's and Kerry's Irish Spring Water as we watched the lucky kids bounce in the giant bouncy castle, play with stilts, and participate in the life-size bouncy Fooze-ball... oh to be young again!