Paddy's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day and Anika and I went into town to watch the parade. We found a front row spot near the end of the route and stood there for more than two hours. It took a while for the front of the parade to reach us and by the time the participants and performers had done the two miles to the place where we were, many of them were pretty exhausted.

It wasn't that easy for us watchers either. We had to wait quite a while -- otherwise you would be behind several rows of people -- and it was also cold and, of course, we got rained on. In the morning before we left home, it was snowing! I was hoping for some interesting Dublin pictures with snow on the ground, but by midday it was all gone. RTE, Ireland's TV network, is making footage from the parade available on its web site. I think they may take it down after a while, but I'm sure it will be on youtube as well.

My pictures are as usual on picasa. The city was packed with tourists. That is usually the case around St. Patrick's day, but this year there might be a few more. Ireland has called for a gathering this year. It asked all Irish descendants and friends around the world to come visit this year. This will help the economy here and also bring people together who may not have seen each other in decades; or ever. Although the crowds were probably thinner yesterday due to the bad weather, judging from the turnout, the Gathering is working.

Anika and I walked back to the train station through the Temple Bar district. This is the main area where people congregate after the parade for a beer or two or maybe a third. It seems people had been practicing starting at least the day before. Empty beer bottles littered the streets. I had hoped to be able to take pictures here of interesting faces, but it was raining again and so Anika and I decided to go back home.

Looking at the information board above, which platform do you think the 16:03 train for Maynooth will leave from? If you guessed platform 4, you would have been correct! Despite having been here for two years now, I keep forgetting that pubic transport here doesn't work like other places. We were standing on platform 7 and, of course, the train never came. When we finally went back down to ask about it, the guy in the information booth told us that we had just missed it. When asked about the platform, he said that extra trains for events like today, always leave from platform 4. Of course! How could we not have known.

Drinking coffee in the train station, waiting for the next one on platform 7.