St. Patrick’s Day is March 17th and if you want to celebrate with the locals then Dublin is the quintessential city! Last year, my husband and I traveled to Dublin to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and what a crazy, crowded party it was. We had no idea what was in store for us so I thought I would share my experience and how we celebrated!
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Guinness Storehouse
We arrived a day before the festivities on March 16th and spent a large portion of our day at the Guinness Storehouse. They were all geared up for St. Patrick’s Day with live music on all seven floors and Irish dancers performing all night. The Guinness Storehouse hosts their St. Patrick’s Day entertainment from March 14th through the 18th. There was a live DJ and dance party on one of the floors, and that’s the floor we hung most of the night at! Your admission ticket got you a free Guinness and it was fun walking from floor to floor listening to the live music and drinking Guinness. The top floor of the Storehouse is the gorgeous Gravity Bar surrounded by glass windows for an amazing 360° view of downtown Dublin.
Tip: They do not allow you to bring an already purchased alcoholic beverage up the stairs to the Gravity Bar (because of the glass) so finish your beer before trying to get into the bar.
After the Storehouse closed for the night, we walked around downtown Dublin and Grafton Street (the pedestrian shopping street) to purchase our St. Patrick’s Day gear for the next day. There are a ton of cart vendors selling merchandise but definitely wait for Carrolls Irish Gifts. They had the best St. Patrick’s Day gear for very inexpensive prices! We ended up with tee-shirts, beanies, four leaf clover and St. Patrick’s Day green necklaces, an Irish flag feather bow, shot glass necklaces, four leaf clover stickers, and an Irish flag flower lei necklace.
St. Patrick’s Day
March 17th is when the actual craziness begins! There is a huge parade that starts at 12:30pm and about 500,000 people flock to Dublin for the day. If you want to watch the parade I would recommend grabbing a spot extremely early in advance. We made the mistake of getting to the parade route area at 12pm and the streets were already blocked off for the parade. The amount of people pushing and shoving on the sidewalks was very overwhelming and I ended up losing my husband along the way. At 12:30pm (and after locating my husband who was about 100 meters ahead of me) we finally gave up trying to see the parade and found the closest pub possible to get off the sidewalk.
Stags Head - Bar
The closest pub we popped into was Stags Head on Dame Court. We really lucked out with this pub because they were playing live Irish music and the pub was not too crowded because of the parade. They were passing out free packets of chips (or crisps) to everyone and the beer was constantly flowing. As soon as the parade was over people started pouring into the pub! We thankfully had staked out a table already and were comfortably seated for the next couple of hours. It was so much fun singing at the top of our lungs and meeting new people from all over the world! We honestly didn’t feel like we missed anything by not watching the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Mulligan and Haines - Bar
After a couple of hours in Stags Head we walked across the street to another bar called Mulligan and Haines. This was a fabulous 3-story bar with another live band playing. We grabbed some beer and shared a table but it was so crowded and loud that it was impossible to hear one another. We only stayed at Mulligan and Haines for about 2 hours before we ventured to the Temple Bar area.
Temple Bar
We had been told that Temple Bar is the tourist area during St. Patrick’s Day and bars charge a hefty cover fee to get in, as well as upcharge on drinks. We thankfully had spent most of our time in local pubs during the day so we didn’t have a problem paying to get into one bar in the area. We did not go into THE Temple Bar as it was absolutely packed so we chose Vat House Bar on Anglesea Street. This pub was large with a live Irish band and dance floor. We ended out night here drinking and dancing the night away!
We honestly had a fabulous time in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day but probably would not go back again during this holiday. The hotel prices are expensive so we stayed in an Airbnb in the Portobello area (southwest of St. Stephen’s Green). It was not a far walk only about 1 mile (1.5 km) to the parade route. I am not sure if we missed out on the parade but we didn’t think so 🙂
Until next time,
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