St. Patrick's Day in Dublin!

So Steve  had a meeting for work in Dublin that was actually being held ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY!  They put him up at the Westbury which is a lovely hotel right off of  Grafton Street.  Of course then, I tagged along.

There are a lot of things going on in the City.  It was a 4 day Festival this year, because the 17th was on a Tuesday.  Things started Friday night and went on all day Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  They always celebrate on the actual day here.  They do not hold the parade the weekend before.  On Monday night we went to get dinner and saw this.  This was the Giant Dolls doing opera and such on Grafton.  It was sponsored by the French Embassy.

This was just a lovely floral display in The Shelbourne where we went for dinner.

This is  Molly Malone in her new location.  I had to take a shot of the Dolly with the Trolley for my friend, Laurie Joachim, who celebrated St. Pat's here with us last year.

People waiting for the parade to start.  The Parade doesn't even start until 12:15, and they were all getting their spots at 10 or earlier!  (Now I didn't stay and line up for the Parade.  Steve and I were able to meet up at noon for lunch and then we went to a game at Croke Park instead.)

I then had to find a Shamrock Shake.  The first one couldn't get their shake machine to work, but I found another one further up the parade route.  Success!  (Funny, I didn't realize there was a Burger King behind me when I took the shot with my McDonald's shake!)