St. Partick's Day - March 2004

Curtis and I both got out the door roughly at 3:00 a.m. in the morning the catch the bus (since there's no Underground at night) to Heathrow which took three transfers and about an hour and a half. We flew out at about 6:40 a.m. and arrived in Belfast City Airport about an hour later. Checked into our hostel which was not the cleaniest or the best smelling place and quickly decided to goto Dublin for St. Patrick's Day as there seemingly was nothing happening in Belfast. It could have been because of it being so early in the morning. It only cost us £25 return (mind you when we went there on Saturday it cost us £23 one way or £33 return) and roughly three hours. So, we were both very tired and thankfully I was able to sleep on the short plane ride and both ways on the train.

When we got to Dublin we could feel the atmosphere of St. Patrick's Day, the biggest holiday in Ireland, coming off the train. People were all dressed up in green with their faces painted. Buildings everywhere were flying the Irish flag as we followed the crowds towards the parade. There were people everywhere. It was very hard to get a good view of the parade. People can be seen all over the city watching the parade from fences, a top statues and buildings. Streets were packed at least six deep trying to get a glimpse of the parade as you can see from my pictures. The costumes were amazing. It was unlike any other parade I have ever seen. There were a lot of odd looking costumes. I think there were "corn people," aliens, and creatures from another dimension. After the parade, many people hit the pubs. There was also a carnival setup on one side of the town but we never made it over there. We would have loved to stay longer in Dublin for St. Patricks Day but the last train left at 2030hrs.

NOTE: Pictures from Curtis have been added to this section.