"Don't Rain on My Parade" (St. Patrick's Day, Dublin)

To quote a newly-made Dublin friend, "We ain't got nothin' on the Macy's Day. By the way, what the heck is a Macy's Day?"

It's true the the Dublin St. Patrick's Day parade is nothing to compare with the New York Parade that delights us each Thanksgiving, but this lively and creative procession still succeeded to impress (especially considering the fact that no one is exactly throwing money at St. Paddy's Day festivities. They're too busy funding Guinness production and churning out "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" t-shirts for eager tourists.)

My initial impression of the parade was one of pleasant surprise. All of the floats and costumes were handmade, and not only did they look professional, they were positively unique and enchanting. In all honesty, many of the elements of the procession were so "artsy" and high fashion (loooove it), that I bet a less-culturally-inclined crowd would have been bored to tears.

I have to admit, I was expecting a whole lot more drunken revelry and a whole lot less culture.

The parade was exciting and intellectually intriguing. There were graceful acrobats, flying machines, sea creature, flying machines, and even an attempt to visually represent the five senses in the form of costumed dancers. There were beautiful witches shouting snippets of scary stories from the pinnacles of towers on wheels and there were futuristic pirate-rockstars wreaking havoc on everyone's ears. So much variety--it was hard to get bored even though we couldn't here a word of what was going on from our perch in the second-story window of a bar overlooking the street.

And for the record, it did not rain in historically dreary Dublin:-). What can I say? God is good.

Title from "Don't Rain on My Parade" by Barbara Streisand.

And so it begins

This is Trinity Bar, the sweet second-story view from which we watched the parade

Ooh, so festive

He's not feeling very festive . . .

A National news crew road past on the roof of a bus

If it isn't Paddy himself!

 

Plenty more Paddy's Day paradin' after the jump!

Like I said, a lot of very artistic and surprisingly well thought-out displays

I mean, this dude's costume in a twin of himself on his head . . .

There was a surprising number of US marching bands and colorguards in the parade

The sense of touch

I forget (aka never knew to begin with) what half of these floats were about

There was a lot of mystical rock music that we couldn't here because the bar was so loud

There were also a lot of unique "flying machines" . . . that and fish. Must have been a theme we didn't know about.