What’s the best time of year to visit Dublin?
It’s a common but always tricky question put to “The Disillusioned Dubliner.” The dry, not-too-crowded shoulder months of May and September are one possible answer; the celebratory, slow, two-week build up to Christmas also displays the city at its best; or how about October, when the trees have turned and the theatres are opening a new season. All in all not an easy question to answer.
When someone asks what’s the worst time of year to … I screw up my already wizened face, cut them off mid-sentence, and answer in a flash—Paddy’s Day.
St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin: Not Impressed
St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin is a nightmare if you don’t fall into one of the following four categories.
2. Vendors who speculated early and cornered the market in oversized green hats and blow-up green hammers.
3. Children under age ten, before the sweets run out and the boredom sets in.
4. No, that’s it, there is no one else.
The seventeenth of March in Dublin is like August in Paris and like summer weekends in New York. Any city resident with a grain of sense gets the hell out of the place and lets the suburban barbarians and foreign innocents try (and fail once again) to convince themselves—as they shiver in the sleety rain and chow down on a half-cooked, frozen, deep-fried fish fillet that cost 11 euro—that they must be having fun because it’s St. Patrick’s day after all. Myself, of course, seeing it as my duty to report this madness to the greater world, this year bravely chose to stay in Dublin and stand witness to the lunacy.
St Paddy’s Day, Plus ca Change
So this March 17, I set out from my city centre apartment with very little hope of encountering anything that might change my dark opinion on our national holiday. I made my way up to Dame Street to get a good position to watch the famous Paddy’s Day parade pass by (an hour and a half later than promised).
But I had forgotten—there is no such thing as a good position to watch the Paddy’s Day parade, somehow, in the shifting ten-deep and surly crowd, you are always behind someone (unless you are one of the sick individuals who arrived in the wee hours of the morning, flask of tea in hand, to book your precious place against the ropes). Add to this the aforementioned ubiquitous giant Leprechaun hats, and any chance of a good view was quickly forgotten.
Memories flooded back of freezing childhood St. Patrick’s Days spent on tippy-toes trying desperately to catch a glimpse of some man with a plastic crozier in hand and a large, Papier Mache mitre on his head. Plus ca change …
Dublin City Council may have spent a few shillings in the last few years turning the St. Patrick’s Day Parade into a week long “Festival,” but here I was again with a bad view of men dressed up in costumes that look like they were made by a six-year-old who had just downed half a cough bottle. Are all parades this boring and uncomfortable? How about Mardi Gras? At least it’s warm I suppose, and the girls are beautiful and half-naked.
But I still think the parade in its essence hints of the Emperor’s New Clothes; everything thinks they are supposed to enjoy them but few really do. I looked around for some kids to make sure my dissatisfaction wasn’t purely an adult rant. Yes, I saw plenty of them smiling, a few laughing, but I quickly noticed it was the crowd, the other children, the sweets stuffed in their mouths that held their interests and delight which quickly wandered from the parade as yet another “creature” made out of paper, spit, and water color paint wobbled by.
.gif){kind=icon}
