One benefit of choosing to go abroad second semester was St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin. I had skipped half a week of traveling just for this day.
The day before, I was walking to Dunnes (essentially SuperTarget but smaller) and just happened to be going right as the school next to campus was getting out and I was astounded at the amount of green and stereotypical paraphernalia I saw. Young boys were decked out in green shirts and then had giant green hats with attached beards and several children had inflatable hammers with the tricolor. I had been told that the Irish do not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as much as the Americans, but as St. Mary’s School in Maynooth showed me, I wasn’t sure what to believe. Needless to say, the young children rallied up my spirits for the next day in Dublin.
When I woke up the next morning, the weather couldn’t have been better. I was ready to go and celebrate the national holiday. My two friends and I made our way into town and as soon as we arrived, we felt the energy and saw the crowds. We walked past a carnival on one street and then made our way to O’Connell St. where the parade was taking place and was amazed at how the O’Connell statute had been flanked by dozens of people. There was pandemonium everywhere! People were surrounding you and there was enough green to cover the whole of Ireland. Although the crowds were so great that we couldn’t see the parade, we still had a great time and enjoyed watching everyone. Eventually we made our way to the even more packed Temple Bar area and made our way to the pub where we had been the previous Sunday for our friend’s birthday. Everywhere there was green and flags, they just never ended. All of the music was again traditional and then some U2 was thrown in, I had never had such a good time. Everyone was singing and dancing, the joy and craic was endless and made me fall even deeper in love with this country. For five hours we found ourselves in the pub in great company with people from all over the world who flocked here just for St. Patrick’s Day.
Eventually though, the inability to move and the wild craziness of the city wore us down and we headed back to Maynooth on the bus so that we could attempt to get some sleep before we headed off to Germany and Austria for four days!
No comments:
Post a Comment