The Day the River Turned Green
16 March 2009
The whole of Chicago turned out wearing green on Saturday for the annual St Patrick’s Day parade. We met Bill, Tracy, Ben & Mandy in a bar near the parade at 11am and the fun started — Guinness for breakfast!
Then it was off to the parade to see random floats and people go by. There was, of course, an Irish feel (well, certainly a ‘green’ feel) and it was a great sight. Ben unsuccessfully tried to get Mandy on his shoulders but Tracy got a great view from up on Bill’s. The parade was still going when we decided to move on after about an hour or so.
We then made our merry way up north, wandering around in the lovely spring sunshine. We made a stop at the river which was dyed green especially for the day — luminous green! We were all a bit shocked at how day-glo it actually was…
All of the Irish bars had queues outside them so we headed to an Italian bar for some drinks and food. Yes, it was an Italian restaurant and yes, it was an Irish holiday. But all the Irish bars had these huge queues — we actually timed one girl in a queue for Fado’s — she was in line for almost an hour. We had eaten, drunk and paid before then.
We hit a few more bars and then decided to get some Thai food (again, yeah, it was an Irish day but hey — the Thai was great!) We finally ended the night in a proper Irish bar, much to Mandy’s delight. Unfortunately they were not playing Irish music so Mandy went to the jukebox armed with dollar bills and threw a load of Irish music on. She also got to eat her corned beef and cabbage — something she’d been saving herself for all day!
We had a great day with top friends — roll on next year! We took a few photos — go check them out on Flickr.