St Patricks Day Parades

Which has just grown and grown with the participation of groups of visiting marching, dancing and pipe bands from all over the world including brave barelegged cheerleaders from the USA and our own little Irish dancing girls, scouts and guides, all decked out in their uniforms, often blue with the cold....

What really reved it up a notch was the participation of Macnas, a small community based theatre company from Galway who invented huge fantastic moving puppets for use in street theatre, parades, particularly the Galway Arts Festival. Often copied but never matched, Macnas itself means 'joyful abandonement' they now have a signature entry every year as well as their own parade in Galway.

So it justs gets bigger and more spectacular every year with some 675,000 people thronging the streets of the capital on the day. With luck (of the Irish) it will be sunny and warm, which always brings out the best in us ! But it doesnt really matter about the weather either as there is so much to do and see in Dublin, not just on St Patricks Day but everyday, like the Guinness and Jameson centres who both host parties and special events on the day and most pubs throughout the city have free music sessions if you can get into them, they are usually thronged. But never mind people watching on St Patricks day is the best as everyone does there best to get dressed up especially the kids, there will be pint sized St Patricks running loose everywhere, now even the dogs on the street know that.....

To sample the atmosphere and whet your appetite for a visit to Ireland you can watch the following video of the 2009 St Patricks Day parade in Dublin here.

For information on Galway please click here

To return to the St Patricks Day Festival page click here

To download free St Patricks Day- iPhone app click here