When Dublin Turned Green

It's the 17th of March, St. Patricks Day -probably one of the most celebrated days in Ireland. On this year 17th March was Monday, but the whole weekend before was a festival time in Dublin, each day there were many things going on in Dublin like free concerts, markets, walking tours, workshops and street performances... So there was no need to worry about the option to get bored.


First of all there is need to break out few myths:
- No, river is not colored green, instead they color many of the important buildings green (by using light, not actual paint..)
- No, people are not completely drunk from morning onward, mostly because strict alcohol policy (Shops are not allowed to sell alcohol on St.Patricks Day before 4pm, and pubs before 12:30pm, I think)
- Yes, there are people all over the world and everyone are wearing some kind of green stuffs

Then about the story of the day:
As I mentioned we took train to Dublin in the morning, we were wearing all kind of green hats, flags of Ireland etc. and of course during the train ride luckily we had one artist on board who painted shamrocks / flags on face for those of us (everyone :D) who wanted, I had a shamrock. Standing several hours outside seeing (or trying to see) the parade actually did start to get a bit boring at some point, to be honest even that the parade was cool I was expecting a bit more... Different towns had some themes and many universities abroad mostly from US. had their own band marching.

After parade streets were flooding with people who all were looking out some place to go.. Walking forward was a kind of a challenge even that at time people were more or less sober, walking forward turned to be a pain in the ass later at night when people weren't sober anymore...

Finally we found ourselves in a a pub, Local old mans pub, cheap, interesting atmosphere. Having few pints over there and just waiting until it would be 4pm because it was a nice weather (by that I mean it wasnt raining), we decided to buy something from supermarket and go to drink in a park... Obviously we were aware of the fact that drinking in public is forbidden in Ireland as it is in many other countries also but we thought that the rules and the reality are two different things as they are in many other countries. Unfortunately at this time reality hit us hard! We had been sitting around sometime in park when two oldish looking gardas walked to us, of course we had hided drinks before as we saw them coming (under the hats etc. clever places) but they checked us up and even searched through some of us bags! They just poured both opened and unopened cans away, luckily few one of us were lucky to survive without being checked.

Well only thing to do after that is to to pub again, it started to be around 7pm at that time I think when we just did kind of a "pub hopping" to stop by in few places and as the evening continued few decided to return already to Maynooth earlier and some later. Last bus was at around 11.30pm, almost everyone took that bus but there were three of us still, Me, Celine & Morgan -the last ones standing who decided to continue evening through the night.. To continue it was time to fuel up first, oh god, I cant even describe how tasteful a chicken box with fries at KFC were! Then was till time for few more pints to enjoy before sharing a taxi to Maynooth, St. Patricks Day was over & Everyone lived happily ever after!