One thing that everyone everywhere surely associates with Ireland is undoubtedly St Patrick’s Day, so that was certainly one if the items on my list of things to do once in Ireland. However I was pretty disappointed ever since I arrived here, to hear most Irish people saying that it is not at all exciting or interesting. Nevertheless, it was on my list, and to St Patrick’s Day I definitely wanted to go.
Therefore I made plans to go with some other people I know. We made a merry group of 5: Zahra, Ross, Monika, Ali and myself. Zahra, Ross and I work in the same lab. Zahra, Monika and I are funded by the same ATWARM programme, whilst Ali is Zahra’s husband. It was our first Irish Paddy’s Day ever, except for Ross who is Irish. We all knew each other and 5 is a good number for such an activity. Not too few, such that it gets boring, but not too many that it gets too much to agree on what to do.
We knew the day will be hectic and so headed out early enough to City Centre. We bought (or OK me and Zahra…Monika already had hers) our Paddy’s Day garb and went to get a place along the route of the parade.
The girls in our Paddy's Day Glory
We found our spot, just in front of the GPO, looking over the grand stand where the President was staying, and waited for the parade to start. It was and hour’s wait, but time flew by quite quickly. The parade started. This year the theme of the parade was a book by Roddy Doyle called Brilliant!. So the parade was all in the theme of the book. I did not read the book before (it is a children’s book: you can read it here), so missed out most of it, but it was nice and colourful.
One of the floats
There were bands and baton twirlers and dancers and floats. Overall it was quite nice and impressive. But I must say nothing compared to the Maltese Carnival floats and so on. No mechanized floats could be seen, and they were quite smaller in size. But impressive nevertheless.
The parade took 2 hours to pass from in front of us. By then it was 2pm, and we were definitely hungry. Zahra and Ali suggested a Persian food shop, and we agreed. We made our way to Temple Bar, and found Zaytoon, a self-service Persian style restaurant. It was quite busy but we managed to put our order through and find some places to sit. When the food came, it was quite delicious. I had the lamb doner kebab. (Quite good value for money too. I paid €10:50 and got chips, a kebab – a full plate mind you with the doner bread, salad, lots of meat and a drink…did not even have to cook dinner yesterday evening. Which is extremely good value especially for Dublin and even more for Temple Bar).
Zaytoon food
After eating, we made our way to a bar in temple Bar, for some live music, drinking (to fill the little space remaining after our big lunch), some ‘dancing’, and an overall good time.
The Paddy's Day gang
By this time the evening had come, and we decided to make our way back home. It was a tiring but extremely fun day. Thank you Zahra, Monika, Ross and Ali for making this day so special. Paddy’s Day 2012…here we come 🙂
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