The Not So Lonely Planet: The Insider's Guide to St Patrick's Day

Fine, I know that this is three months too late, but hey, St Paddy's Day 2010 isn't for another nine months......

1. Inevitably like all national days, St Patrick's day is more exciting for the non-Irish, or the Irish aboard. (Green beers and dyeing the river green was in Chicago, not Dublin.) My Irish colleague told me that she thought "St Patrick's day is THE most boring public holiday, with nothing on tv except boring parades, and that all the stores are closed."

2. Parades on St Patrick's day use to be a low key event (with people getting drunk at the local pub at the end, but hey, isn't that just a daily occurence?), and the parade consisted of tractors driving slowly down the main street of the local village. In this current economic climate, one can except that the days of the tractor parade may make a come back again.

(Above: Parade Time in Dublin; A Far Cry from the Yesteryears of the Tractor Parade.)

3. The Irish have no idea what St Patrick's day specifically celebrates. I had asked my Irish colleague what was the deal with the snakes as per the St Paddy's Simpson's episode. Again, my Irish colleague told me, "I'm not sure...... It's just a day celebrating Irishness, I guess."

4. St Patrick's day is the only day where it's socially acceptable to wear tacky souvenir Irish t-shirts, novelty hats, have your face painted with Irish symbols and spray paint your hair green. Outside of this day, you'd have to be American. Towards the end of the night, people bond over having bought the same tacky t-shirt.

5. Expect to see girls with green glitter makeup, green nail polish, and depending on how emo the guy is, he'd likely be wearing the same too.

6. On the lead up (as in a few days before,) and on St Patrick's day, you can expect a mark up on souvenir Irish t-shirts and hats of about four times it's original value. $20AUS for a novelty hat? I don't think so.

7. Only on St Paddy's day, is it socially acceptable to dress your Irish kid up as a leprecaun. Outside of this day, it could be considered child abuse, and one can expect a visit from social services.

8. No matter how drunk you are, it is not cool to try and catch one of these so called "leprecauns". Joke all you want about "wanting that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow", but the child's parents will likely view you as a paedophile.

9. The best novelty hats are not available to be purchased in Ireland, but in other European countries such as Italy and the UK. So woebegone was D when we were unable to find one to purchase at the end of the night, that I looked up on ebay a few weeks later and bought him one after the fact.

(Above: D looks as pleased as a Cheshire Cat)

10. If you have red hair and managed to get the Guiness hat (as per point no 9) for free, you were probably only given that out of pity.....for being a ginger. (Well, not quite, but this is what I told one guy :p and then his friends laughed and went, "Ooooh....... That's a good one.". Trust me, he was just a little too smug about his hat with the whole, "Oh, you've gotta earn it," and needed to be taken down a notch or two :p)

11. There is a HUGE descent of people from all around the world, (collectively, they're called "tourists",) for St Patrick's day in Dublin. So huge is this event, that if you would like accommodation in the city and are traveling in a group of maybe four people or more, you better book your accommodation by December (as in the year before). A large majority of tourists appear to be Americans, who seem to have a strong affiliation with Ireland. Lots of Irish moved to America, particularly around Boston (hence the Boston Celtics) and New York. Why, I don't know..... I'm just assuming that one Paddy went, and then the rest of them followed.

12. As the tourists make their descent into Dublin, Dubliners generally.....look to get out of Dublin and the chaos that it becomes. The Dubliners that stay in Dublin are generally the ones with young children, because as we all know, once you have babies, it is like PRISON, and you are officially STUCK.

13. If you are clever, organise a road trip around St Paddy's day and look to rent in the outskirts of Dublin city centre, such as Rathmines where parking is free, and you can look to take the Luas into the city centre.

14. St Patrick's day is celebrated in two shifts. The morning shift is up and around the city by 10am, looking to watch the parade, with people starting to head home around 5pm. Expect to see lots of prams & families in the morning shift.

The evening shift starts around 6pm, with everybody nicely dressed in their going out clothes, (and then things starting to get extremely messy around 10pm...). It is advisable not to be in the city around midnight with the broken glass and drunk people getting ugly.

It is physically not possible to do both shifts as alcohol cannot sustain you for that prolonged period of time.

15. People in Ireland are generally not particularly strategic. When two Luases heading to the city centre went by (and all were chocka-block full), everybody basically stayed on the platform, patiently waiting for the next tram in hope that the following one would be less full. In the meanwhile, we took the Luas in the opposite direction so that we could get further out of the city where the train would be less full going into the city.

16. There are plenty of young parents who are selfish and think that it is okay to load a humungous pram onto a crowded Luas, even though they are with enough people so that somebody can hold the damn baby, and the other can fold up the pram to create more room.

17. Old timers bring a step ladder to the parade.