St. Patrick's Day

In the middle of Spring Break, I came back to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day. At first I was annoyed that it was right in the middle of break, but it was nice to come back and be able to do some laundry and repack before the next leg of break. Angela and her friend Caitlin stayed in my flat for the weekend as well as the majority of the ND London Programme. Our program had a lot of events planned for us, which was nice.

On Saturday we had St. Patrick’s Day mass in the city. Andrew Hoyt said the homily about McDonald’s shamrock shakes and children throwing nuts at him. Next was the main event of the weekend: our Irish dance performance. We had a much bigger audience than I expected, but it went fairly well. After that we had brunch. We were a little angry at the way they handed out tickets for the next events. It wasn’t organized and the people at my end of the table ended up not getting parade passes.

After that, I had a really fun day with Kelly, Kelly, and Karla from my dorm at ND. We went to the O’Connell House where Lisa was giving tours. Next we went to Trinity to see the Book of Kells, which I hadn’t seen yet. Then we went to St Patrick's Cathedral. It was cold and rainy the entire day, which seems to be a theme of my Spring Break. We stopped along the way for some Baileys Hot Chocolates. Next we had dinner at a restaurant across from the Brazen Head. We then took a cab to Parnell Park where we were supposed to go for a GAA game, but when we got there we were told it was cancelled because the weather was so bad. So we paid for the cab there and back for nothing. I went back to my flat after that because all I wanted was a hot shower and warm bed after our day out in the rain.

On Sunday Angela, Caitlin, and I went to mass at a church north of the Liffey, and it was cool because the bishop was presiding. When I was going up for communion, the priest dropped a bunch of hosts a few people in front of me, and he got incredibly flustered. I think it was partly because the bishop was there. I found it interesting that the palms they give here for Palm Sunday look like evergreen trees rather than palm trees like ours.

After mass we all went for shamrock shakes with Andrew, and then we went to Merrion Square for the St. Patrick’s Festival. They had carnival rides, food, and entertainment, but I found it very strange that it wasn’t very Irish. There were Indian music performers most of the time we were there.

That night I went to see The Poet and the Piper at the National Concert Hall, featuring Seamus Dean, arguably the greatest living poet. It was a little bit boring to me to hear poetry read for that long, but I definitely appreciated the experience. After that Karla, Kelly, and I went to the carnival right before it closed and rode the Freak Out. It was one of the best rides I’ve been on, and it was weird to be swinging over the tops of Georgian Buildings in Dublin. Then we went back to Kelly’s room and hung out and had hot chocolate and digestives.

The next day we got up early for St. Patrick’s Day. When we got into the city the first street vendor we saw was selling scarves that had the ND leprechaun on it. Kelly and I had to get them as souvenirs. They’re not the prettiest scarves, but it’s cool to say we got an ND scarf on the streets of Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day. We ended up getting a really good spot for the parade – right on the bridge over the Liffey. We had to wait a long time for the parade, but we decorated ourselves and had a good time. The parade itself was very, very strange – very different from American parades. The things they had didn’t make much sense. I took lots of pictures there because I thought it was bizarre.

After the parade we went to a pub for lunch. I got Beef and Guinness Pie, my favorite pub food. It was delicious. The pub had green water for St. Patrick’s Day, which was a little strange. After lunch, Angela, Caitlin, and I went to Ceil Mohr, an Irish music celebration.

At 3:45am I left for Rome.