- Mardi Gras in New Orleans
- Carnival in Rio
- Oktoberfest in Munich
- The Hajj in Mecca (sorry, wrong audience)
But by far, all the lists have St. Patrick's Day in Dublin. Pretty cool that we've been able to check that one off our list. Having lived in Chicago for a good decade, I certainly understood March 17th as a significant party day and my expectations of this day in Dublin were pretty set in my mind.
Our plans included the parade downtown and attending the Senior All Ireland Club Championships at Croke Park. Everywhere you go in this country, you'll find a GAA club (Gaelic Athletic Association). There are hundreds of these clubs around the country. Early in the year, each of the clubs in both Hurling and Gaelic football participate in a tournament that culminates in the finals at Croke Park on St. Patrick's day. So these are small town teams of friends and brothers. In talking with my co-workers, winning the championship for your club is pretty much a "get a free drink at the local pub" card for life.
Before we could head out, we had to get J.J. thru his guitar lesson. That accomplished and J.J. well onto the path of greatness playing American Pie, we headed out to the train to make our way down to the parade. On our way to the train, we had a reminder from home. When we would go out for walks, we would often talk of having a "20 slug walk". This day was a "1 slug walk" and a pretty pathetic slug at that.
We were told we should get there early to see anything and that advice was spot on. It was 10 deep and every lamppost and statue was occupied at capacity.
There were a lot of metal sculpture floats that were pretty cool. Marching Bands were also common, but I didn't expect to see the Notre Dame marching band. The only thing better would have been the Xavier Marching Band coming down in the opposite direction and having a brawl break out.
My favourite picture was this one of the boys attempting to catch a better view from the top of posts that line the sidewalks where they don't want cars to attempt to double park on the side-walks.
I've found it very common to find cars parked up on the side-walk in this country.
After about an hour of kids on shoulders and seeing very little, we decided to head for the games.
We made our way to Croke Park. Our delayed departure from home meant we were going to get to the stadium a bit late. This meant we missed most of the Hurling match. We saw the last few moments. It was enough to certainly know that we HAVE TO get to some more of these games. It was incredibly fast moving and exciting. In the end, Loughgeil beat Coolderry.
The second game was the Gaelic Football final. This match was between Crossmaglen and Garrycastle. This was a really exciting game. Imagine soccer, rugby, & football combined. It's a very fast moving game and it seemed like the team doctors were on the field every 5 minutes. The teams score 1 point for kicking the ball through the goal posts and 3 points for kicking it in the goal. You can't pick up the ball with your hands, but can field it on a bounce. It is rolling on ground, you perform this little move where you kick it into your hands with your feet. You can take 4 steps with ball before you much dribble or pass it to another player. You can't throw it, but
must do a hand pass which is a like an underhand serve in volleyball or kick it to another. Unlike soccer, there's plenty of contact and although tackling is supposedly illegal, there seemed to be a lot of it going on. At the end there was a frenzy of activity as Crossmaglen made a furious comeback and came close to winning outright. The game came out to be a draw. The red/green of Garrycastle and the yellow/black of Crossmaglen filed out of the stadium. Nobody seemed too disappointed. There were about 25,000 people at the games.
We did manage to get a Guinness at the stadium, but have found that big parties on St. Patrick's Day will have to wait until the kids are a bit older. It was a very nice day!
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