Ah, St. Patrick's Day. The day everyone celebrates the patron saint of Ireland by drinking and partying, thinking how great it is to be Irish (or wishing they knew how great it is). It's never been too big of a deal for me, but being smack in the middle of Ireland, this year I decided to celebrate in style in Dublin. Well, OK, "in style" was a lie, but I
was in Dublin. The city is on the opposite side of the country, but it's only about a 3 hour bus ride away from Limerick. It seems to me like Ireland is a lot of farmland spotted by a few larger cities and Dublin appears to be a classier one. I didn't get to see much of the city besides O'Connell street, which is where the parade is held, but I'd like to go back and see more. Almost everyone was dressed in green, a lot of people had crazy hats as well, including viking helmets and Native American headdresses. We arrived at 10am, in time to stake out some prime spots to watch the parade. It was a
long two and a half hours waiting for it to start but it was well worth it. The parade lasted for an hour and a half. Coming from Eau Claire, most parades I've seen are a few marching bands and a few floats, but this was beyond that. There were marching bands, a high school one from Louisiana and a college band from North Carolina State, as well as other bands from Ireland and Austria. Military members. Dogs. Horses. Then some awesome costumes--some people were dressed up to represent different cultures, others were horses, giraffles, or even eggs. The best ones in my opinion were the giant bugs brought by a group from Spain. After the parade, we went to visit the Guinness factory in Dublin. It was pretty good; there was a tour you could take on your own that went through how they make Guinness, the history of the company, you know, typical museum-type stuff. I found out that Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for the land (no, that's not a typo), why some of the ads have a toucan (and that the toucan replaced a pelican), and tried some samples of Guinness and Guinness bread. It's awesome--I am going to try to find a recipe for that as soon as I get back to the States. While I don't despise it, I think I'll need to drink more dark beer before I can actually say that I like Guinness, but it makes
good bread.
Ah, St. Patrick's Day. The day everyone celebrates the patron saint of Ireland by drinking and partying, thinking how great it is to be Irish (or wishing they knew how great it is). It's never been too big of a deal for me, but being smack in the middle of Ireland, this year I decided to celebrate in style in Dublin. Well, OK, "in style" was a lie, but I was in Dublin. The city is on the opposite side of the country, but it's only about a 3 hour bus ride away from Limerick. It seems to me like Ireland is a lot of farmland spotted by a few larger cities and Dublin appears to be a classier one. I didn't get to see much of the city besides O'Connell street, which is where the parade is held, but I'd like to go back and see more. Almost everyone was dressed in green, a lot of people had crazy hats as well, including viking helmets and Native American headdresses. We arrived at 10am, in time to stake out some prime spots to watch the parade. It was a long two and a half hours waiting for it to start but it was well worth it. The parade lasted for an hour and a half. Coming from Eau Claire, most parades I've seen are a few marching bands and a few floats, but this was beyond that. There were marching bands, a high school one from Louisiana and a college band from North Carolina State, as well as other bands from Ireland and Austria. Military members. Dogs. Horses. Then some awesome costumes--some people were dressed up to represent different cultures, others were horses, giraffles, or even eggs. The best ones in my opinion were the giant bugs brought by a group from Spain. After the parade, we went to visit the Guinness factory in Dublin. It was pretty good; there was a tour you could take on your own that went through how they make Guinness, the history of the company, you know, typical museum-type stuff. I found out that Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for the land (no, that's not a typo), why some of the ads have a toucan (and that the toucan replaced a pelican), and tried some samples of Guinness and Guinness bread. It's awesome--I am going to try to find a recipe for that as soon as I get back to the States. While I don't despise it, I think I'll need to drink more dark beer before I can actually say that I like Guinness, but it makes good bread. 
9000 years? Are you serious?
ReplyDeleteThat being said, this looks pretty awesome. Your mom brought some pictures but I'm only about halfway through. Still looks crazily good!