HAPPY PADDY'S DAY! 

Celebrating Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland was amazing!  When we woke up on Saint Patrick's Day, we looked out the window and immediately cringed: it looked like a blizzard outside.  It was snowing heavily, and it was just warm enough to melt the snow as soon as it hit the ground to make everything wet.  Still, we didn't travel thousands of miles to sit in our hotel room while the rest of the country celebrated one of Ireland's biggest holidays, so we put on our green, white, and orange (including Laura's sparkly green shoe covers!) and headed out in the awful weather to join the party!  Luckily (the luck of the Irish, perhaps?!) the snow ceased before we got into town and just left behind gray skies.

When we got off the bus near city centre, things didn't seem as busy as we thought they would be.  The streets were blocked off, but were easily manageable in the small crowds.  After walking for a short while, we finally found the wall of people crowding O'Connell street; thousands and thousands of people lined the parade route, and thousands more (over eight thousand, actually) lined up to walk in the parade.  We were amazed at how many people had come to celebrate, and loved seeing all of the people dressed up to show their Irish pride.  After fighting our way up O'Connel Street, we finally found a small bicycle post that Laura managed to stand on to get some pictures and videos.  Everyone was cheering and celebrating, and we joined in to cheer for Ireland.

After balancing on the bicycle post for a good ten minutes, Laura hopped down to find an opening in the crowd to watch the rest of the parade.  Unfortunately, a little rain prevented too many pictures of all of the amazing floats and different groups marching in the parade (Laura didn't want to risk her camera getting wet!), but she managed to get a good amount of pictures and videos in the beginning to share the experience.  She put together a short (poorly edited) video to avoid posting too many pictures to scroll through; We hope the video gives you a little taste of the celebration!   (Warning: there's a bad word in the song... it's about the Irish after all!)