Day Two (Saint Patrick’s Day) - Dublin

Due to heavy drinking the night before I skipped breakfast and slept in. Afterwards we took a bus to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, since it was St. Patrick’s Day. They were preparing for a huge parade so a lot of the roads were blocked off which made getting around very difficult all day until the parade was over. Eventually we made our way to Phoenix Park which was beautiful and is home to the American ambassador and the Irish president. Then headed over to Trinity College where the Book of Kells is kept. I was really excited to see it until I actually saw it. Very anti-climactic.




. By the time we were done looking at a book underneath a piece of glass, the group went their separate ways and Gina, Art, Akansha, Effat, and I headed to the parade. I was told before coming here that we American’s make a much bigger deal about the holiday than the Irish actually do. Whoever told me that is a dumb ass. The parade was huge like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade except the balloons are much closer to the ground. I was also told that no one wears green. Again, that person was very wrong. Everyone is very festive, locals and tourist alike. However, it was very crowded. People were standing on telephone booths, ladders, even on top of buildings, just to catch a glimpse of the action. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to get a view that good.


Eventually we decided to head out, the only problem was that because of the parade we couldn’t get around very far since the buses and trams weren’t running until after it was over. We stumbled across a movie theatre and decided to see “No Country for Old Men”. Not exactly the most Irish thing we could’ve done but we had a lot of time to kill and I was dying to see that movie for sometime. Afterward we headed back to the Spire (a.k.a. the Stiletto in the Ghetto) to meet the group for dinner. After dinner we went back to the hotel with some beer and liquor and partied there a little bit. We met some local kids who were pretty cool and very funny. Then we headed back to temple bar for a traditional St. Paddy’s Day celebration, which includes drink large quantities of alcohol. We took a cab back to the hotel and found the local friends we had made still here. So after hanging out by the front door of our hotel for a little over an hour we all went back to a room and had a few more drinks. We ended up staying up until the sun came up. It looked great from the 5^th floor of the hotel. After that I went to bed.