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As you might imagine, St Patrick’s Day is a big deal here. I was surprised how much bigger a deal it was than the last time I was here 15 years ago.

We started our day by using the free fun fair ride tickets we got at the scavenger hunt. Then we headed in to the parade. It was packed!

Somehow we mentioned to get a place where, if the girls balanced on the edge of a store window and me, they could see the parade. I was pretty impressed. There are marching bands – but there were also a number of cool float type things. I took a load of pictures. Most of the pictures do not include us – just the parade. Also a little luck went into the pictures since I had to hold the camera way over my head to get any shots.

We stayed at the parade for about 90 minutes. We left a little before it ended. We were with Patrick’s Michael and some of his colleagues from Canberra. We snock down a few back alleys and found ourselves out near Christ Church – still on a parade route but not so much in the thick of it. We were starving and our timing was perfect as we got a table at a pub on the parade route. We couldn’t believe it.

We had a nice (not too healthy) lunch at the pub. Then we headed to the Guinness Storehouse. Rumor had it that there was a big festival there too.

Well we got a little worried when we walked into the Storehouse (by walked I mean paid to visit). We got a tour of the Guinness factory, which was cool but not super fun for all ages – though pretty cool. After the tour the 2 Guinness drinkers got their samples and we decided to head for the 7th floor.

The 7th floor is all windows and looks out over the City. It is amazing – and worth slogging through the Guinness stuff. Also once we got to the upper floors we found the festival stuff. Kate and I chowed on the free smoked salmon.

We saw band or two, hung out for a while and eventually went home. I could see that if you didn’t have kids you could spend the rest of your night here.