We spent the Easter holidays in Ireland and Scotland - it turned out to be one of our most memorable holidays yet. We have always wanted to go to Dublin for Saint Patrick’s Day, so we planned a trip to arrive on the 16th and depart on the 18th. After the trip had been planned, we found out that the Catholic Church moved the feast day of Saint Patrick to Saturday the 15th. Many cities moved their Saint Patrick’s celebrations to the 15th as well, however, fortunately for us; Dublin was not one of them. We got up bright and early on the 17th and proceeded downtown. We went to the Temple Bar area (large pedestrian area) and had a traditional Irish breakfast at The Boxty House, an Ireland institution. After breakfast, we went to the parade, which starts at Parnell Square, proceeds down O’Connell Street, and then onto Pearse Street running in front of Trinity College, which is right in front of the Temple Bar area. We were situated in front of Trinity College, and having gotten there about an hour early, had secured a pretty decent location from which to see the parade. The parade had started at 12:30, a half hour late due to the tardiness of The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councilor Paddy Bourke. The kids loved seeing the marching bands, floats, and exotic costumes. After a couple of hours the parade was wrapping up so we made our way over to the Guinness brewery in St. James’s Gate.
We took a tour of the storehouse, which consists of 7 floors. It was a special day for the brewery in light of Saint Patrick’s, so they had live music on several floors, including a local marching band on the ground floor. There was also a demonstration of Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian blend of martial art, game, and dance created by enslaved Africans in Brazil during the 16th Century. At one point in the demonstration, they invited JP to come out and take part in the show, who amazed the crowd with his version of the art, which looked more like break dancing. The whole Guinness experience turned out to be a really family friendly event (all the real partiers were downtown in the temple bar area), and we all had fun taking part in the celebrations and learning about the brewing process to boot. After the tour, we were all exhausted so we took a taxi back to the hotel (something we rarely do - we always try to soak in the local experience and use the public transport whenever possible). The next day, we flew from Dublin to Edinburgh.
