Some St. Patrick's Day fun!

I still have more to fill in between last post and this - Laura's weekend here and our trip to the Aran Islands - but in the interest of trying to keep up with Julie (I fail), here are some videos from St. Patrick's Day, which was gorgeously sunny and warm! Downtown was packed, and everyone wore tacky green accessories just like at home! I met up with Julie, Jaye, Jess, and Heather downtown, where we basked in the warmth and enjoyed the parade. The others felt it went on for too long, but it was WAY shorter than Scranton's parade... only a little over an hour! There was also a distict "ocean" theme, which sort of overshadowed any type of St. Patrick theme there might have been. There were also TWO groups from Canada in the parade (why?).

Some things missing included: the first hour of the parade being taken up by the Irem Temple guys; pipe bands (there was only one!); the Pixie Chicks (thank God); the Grump (replaced by the Easter Bunny, a penguin, and some sort of fish thing); everyone I know in some section of the parade or another; the medieval combat people (sort of replaced by little kids dressed up as Order of Malta knights... but they had no horses or billowy cloaks).

New experiences included: dancing jellyfish; hundreds of children playing the tin whistle; a meditating guy on a float flanked by women doing tai-chi-esque movements; many hurling teams made up of small chanting children; the float for the lifeboat people with one of their people "saving" a victim, who spurted realistic blood!; Pink Floyd.

Here's a hurling team (followed by a giant sliotar, or hurling ball). Sorry for all of the pitching about on my part... it was very crowded. I essentially had a small boy sitting on my face the entire parade instead of on his father's shoulders as was the original plan.



Had I known there would only be one pipe band, I would have taken a video of it, but as it is here is some other type of music. The one thing is sort of like a bagpipe:



Leprechauns!



Afterwards we stopped at Supermacs (a fast food chain) for some lunch, which we brought down to the Spanish Arch - ABSOLUTELY FULL of people milling about, eating, drinking... the side across the river was full too, and every now and then one of the sides would start yelling, and then the other would start to see who could be louder.




Jess and Jaye's roommate Fergus came to meet us, and we headed for Eyre Square. We picked up their other roommate Mark on the way. Shop Street was full too, and Eyre Square was full of teenagers (lame) - where did all these people come from?! To escape the teenagers, we went into the Skeff to hang out, and the barman made a shamrock in my Guinness! We went back down to the Spanish Arch after that, which had gotten even fuller since we had been there last, to meet up with some of the other Menlo girls.



In all that fine weather I got a little bit of sunburn!! Very exciting stuff. All in all an excellent day, even though I did miss Fergus singing the Rattlin' Bog song (see Julie's blog for a video).

One final crowd shot: