Hey everyone! So My Girls on Tour decided to venture over to Ireland to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. The Irish are renowned for their hard partying and amazing spirit – so the perfect place really to celebrate a festival which has come to be associated with crazy fancy dress costumes and Guinness Drinking.

At Carolls buying some memorabilia for the big day!
Woohoo! Dublin, my first time to Ireland! So pumped Yay Yay YAY! Announcement* – Ryanair flight to delayed
Fail, EPIC FAIL! Deep breath, I won’t let Ryanair ruin my Irish experience. I changed my I-phone track to the Cranberries (Zombie of course!) and strode over resolutely to the free Whiskey sample stand. St Patrick’s day, WOOHOO! OK, so now that I actually find myself in front of the stand, the proper real festive, celebratory thing to do would be to shot some down. Really though, it is 10 am? One shot, just for the sake of doing it? So yes, another fail. I took a sneaky pic, gazed gleefully at the green, orange and white balloons and then snuck off to Costa Coffee. I felt like the Grinch of Paddy’s.
Arriving at the city center, the Grinch’s heart started to melt. Groups of festive tourists in large green hats, shops with fun costumes, beads, wands, glasses, face paints. Temple bar was full with revelers. Although very kitsch, large murals of leprechauns and even a leprechaun museum. All the buildings were lit up in Green.We walked around and saw some real old pubs and the fun went on long into the night. As Sir Toby Belch says in Twelfth Night, ‘not to be a-bed after midnight is to be up betimes’.





Today is the day, the parade. We lined up all dressed up. A sea of green. The sky was grey, ominous, the flashes of colors, children’s balloons, a stark contrast. It was the music that we heard first, light and airy, almost celestial. The rain had started a few minutes earlier. When the sound reached our ears, a cheer rippled through the crowd. A huge roar and a first pump came from the young guy next to me who had been standing in just a t-shirt. Then came the procession, rolling slowly towards us. Dancers, clowns, traditional costumes, huge sculptures, acrobats and carousels, all performing and entertaining. The revelry made the Gods smile and the sky got lighter and the sun came out.
The theme of the parade was Science. Dinosaurs in wheel chairs, eyes and plants. A festival of science and religion.
Indeed St Patrick’s day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrating the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and the most commonly-recognized patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick. On this day, the day of St Patrick’s death, it is customary to wear shamrocks and green clothing or accessories.St Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish.


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