Culture

Dublin - St. Patrick's Parade 2011

by infomatique | March 17, 2011 at 12:25 pm

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Maybe it is my imagination but the Dublin parade appears to be getting shorter and there are also fewer marching bands from the USA.

This year more than 500,000 people packed Dublin city centre for a hour parade which actually started on time thus making appear shorter than it actually was … I was more than a little bit surprised to be back in my apartment by 13:20. On previous years I did not get back home until 14:30 or later.

Many years ago the Dublin parades were dominated by US high school marching bands but this year I only counted two (maybe there were more) and in a way the move away from a dependency on bands from the USA is a good thing because people from other countries now get the opportunity to become involved thus making the event much more colorful. I was informed by someone involved in the tourist sector that the American bands are now more likely to take part in parades organized by towns and cities other than Dublin.