St. Patrick's Day

One trip tops another, this time to the motherland for the national holiday of St. Patrick's Day. Every time Erin introduced herself to a local, you could see them sigh just a little and say "Aw, welcome home", but in Irish. (Yes, that is a language, wait until you go there).

Erin, Jen Bradshaw and I left London on Friday night at about 8pm and arrived at our hotel in Dublin at about 9:30. Meredith Birkmeyer, who you may remember from our romp around Paris last year, decided to join us from Seattle for the weekend as well. We all met in the lobby and decided that we should at least go out for a pint but that we'd save the "big night" for Saturday night. Meredith arrived a day early to visit some friends and had a whole itinerary for us. Before we knew it we were sipping Guiness in a packed pub near St. Stephen's Green. A few pints and a few pubs later it was closing time, probably around 1am. Meredith happened to strike up a conversation with some locals and told them about the "club" we were going to next. They scoffed and said we should follow them to a "private after hours club". We love stuff like that so we started the march, the four of us, plus about about six others. We weren't sure what we were getting into, but they led us into this small basement club with music pounding and then Kevin, our host ordered bottles of champagne. Just what you need after a bunch of guiness is a bunch of champagne. I knew that would be a bad hangover.....but I couldn't be rude. The group we were with were a ton of fun, there was Kevin a local optician, Angry John, who was constantly warned by Kevin to be nice to the poor American, me. He wasn't so much angry as passionate about the stupidity of the American political system. I could sympathize. The angry label really came when looking at the group picture the next day. (He's the one in the back on one on the slideshow). We also met Kevin's sister who was the first Irish woman in the Royal Ballet...needless to say, Erin was impressed. There were a few other friends of their's but I can't remember all of their names. After a few dances, a few glasses of champagne, we all decided that 4am marked a good time to end our "early night".

On Saturday we all were up and out for breakfast by 10am...amazing considering our late night, but heck we were in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day, we had to go to the parade. Well the parade was amazing, there were literally millions of people lining the streets and every single one was either wearing a crazy hat, or a crazy outfit or had their face painted or all three. The entire route was lined ten people deep trying to see. The other big excitement was that Ireland was playing Italy in the Six Nations Cup in Rugby. If Ireland won and France didn't win by as much, Ireland could take the cup for the first time in 20 years. Everyone was excited and all of the pubs were packed. We jammed into one where we couldn't even see the TV, but it was fun to be a part of the excitement. Ireland beat Italy by about 25 points, a decisive win and everyone was excited. Now it was up to France to lose to Scotland, or just not win by much. Unfortunately France crushed Scotland so it was disappointing in the end. We missed the second match because it was nap time for all of us.

After a couple hours of nap time, we all met back in the pub in the hotel at about 7:30pm to get ready to go out for the "big night". I think we all wanted to go back to bed and watch a movie instead of going out. But, we were in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day!! So we dragged our butts to the Temple Bar area of Dublin where all of the cheesy, overly tourist bars are, and all of the action. It was overwhelming, but we decided to drop into different pubs and have a drink and move on. After two or three jammed bars we found one that wouldn't let in obviously drunk green-faced hooligans. But they let us in. It was nice, it wasn't as crowded, there was cool art on the walls, good vibe. We may have found a good spot for the night. Then Meredith, the most single of us, noticed there were a lot of girls in the bar and few guys...and the male bartender kept serving guys instead of Jennifer no matter how much flirting she did. Yep, we were in a predominantly lesbian bar. Looking around more we saw that not only were there a lot of girls, but many were kissing each other. I was fine with staying, but the consensus was that it was time to go.

We wandered a bit more, all of us dragging a bit, but energized by the buzz of the day and the energizing power of Guiness...we finally found a bar, The Stag's Head, that was one Erin had been to in the past and Meredith's friend had recommended, but was hard to find. Once we got our beers we walked into the back room to look for a place to sit and lo and behold, Kevin, Angry John and their friends were there. What a coincidence! We were introduced to the two Nile's, fun-size and king-size were their nicknames, we kept forgetting fun-size and called him pint-size...needless to say he didn't like that. We were invited to join them and we sat around with more Guiness laughing hysterically for hours as Angry John, became flirty, fun John because of Jennifer, he was like Vince Vaughn in Swingers. He hysterically pulled off lines to Jennifer that no normal man could pull off, not to mention he was wearing a killer fur coat. I admit, I developed a bit of a man crush myself...as Erin has enjoyed telling me. His crush on Jen was fun for all of us.

We stayed at the Stag's head until closing time then all moved to a late night club down the street. Of course we were tired, so Red bull replaced Guiness and powered us into the night. Suddenly the late night place was closing, around 4am...but this night was too fun, we had to keep going. Next thing you know we're at Kevin's house. I only went because he said we could get pizza. He lied, there was no pizza. Now we're on to wine...at 4 or 5am....not good for the body. Next thing I knew it was light out and we were in a taxi...at 7am.

After a brief nap, Meredith and I took off for the Guiness factory to go on a tour and get some souveniers before our 3pm flight. After waiting in line outside in the sleet for an hour we decided we didn't have enough time and had to skip straight to the gift shop before leaving. An hour for no tour. Fortunately, I didn't have a hangover, so it wasn't too bad...I was still drunk. I think we all were.

Back onto the plane and back to London. I've never slept so well. I finally felt okay by Wednesday. I'm definitely getting too old for this, but what a blast! Go to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day, but take cute girls with you and meet up with Kevin, King-Size, Fun-size and hysterical John...definitely a fantastic time.

Ted