The Irish

I will always hold Paddy’s Day close to my heart. When I was young, it meant green breakfasts, followed by school celebrations, frosted with green sugar. Paddy’s Day brought shamrock crafts, leprechaun gifts, a house decorated in glimmering Irish pride, and an impressive display of cards, from distant family, spilling over the living room table. In my teens, this slowly morphed into a filling breakfast, with steaming, creamy coffee; followed by a day at school, sporting a “Kiss me I’m Irish” badge; ending at the barre, desperately trying to hide a tiny hint of green somewhere over my leotard and tights, usually a shiny shamrock sticker or temporary tattoo. In college, I ended up at a different type of bar. My roommate would make breakfast, and we would get dressed together; first the green shamrock tights, then the orange shirt and green shorts that say “Irish Bum” on the back, held up by green suspenders, made more epic by an Irish flag cape, and topped with an “Irish Princess” crown, which occasionally got swapped for a leprechaun hat. We donned our green beads and badges through the streets of campus, meeting up with friends at different locations, and ended back on our porch, barbecuing dinner and laughing about the day, whilst wiping off the sweet remnants of Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Irish cream icing, from our lips and hands.

With all of those wonderful memories in mind, the most important Paddy’s Day, to me, was the one spent in Dublin, two years ago. I remember the anticipation during the early morning bus ride, the excitement on the streets, and all of the craic the day would bring. After that, Paddy’s became a celebration of the time I spent in Ireland: music, dance, friends and beauty of the country.

This year, one of my friends invited me to go on a pub crawl. She is from Cork, and had a group of friends visiting from Ireland, to celebrate the weekend. I was so excited to go with them and spend the day surrounded, once again, by the Irish. Instead, I spent the day surrounded by tea mugs, soup bowls, anesthetic throat spray, hot packs, cough drops, antibiotics and extra blankets. I came down with Strep throat just a few days before, and despite my best efforts, was unable to become well enough to celebrate.

I was extremely disappointed. However, I was able to reconnect with Ireland, on a different level, the prior weekend, when two of my friends from Dance UL, the intervarsity dance team I was on at University of Limerick, came to visit me. The first night, they came to New Cross, and we caught up over dinner and drinks in my favorite local pubs. The next day, we walked around Oxford Circus, Hyde Park and Piccadilly Circus. A theme/inside joke that came out of one of the dances we competed at intervarsities, to Bloc Party’s “Hunting for Witches”, was to do “The Creep”, which is a Lonely Island/Saturday Night Live reference. I say this only as a disclaimer to prepare you for the photos below.

That afternoon, we saw A Chorus Line. The cheap seats ended up being in the second row, which would have been terrible for almost any other show, but ended up being perfect for this one. I’ve seen the movie and performed the audition piece, with the Dance Ensemble of Michigan (DEMI), but I’ve never seen it live. It left me in tears.

Afterward, we picked up some pink champagne, to celebrate Rebecca’s birthday, while they got ready in the hotel, to go out for her birthday dinner and drinks. I got to play DJ, as I was not joining them for the big night out.

The next morning, we got off to a late start, meeting for brunch around London Bridge. The weather was horrid, but we made our way to the Covent Garden Market, before calling it a day and going to dinner early. We went to the Sushi Samba. I’ve been to the one in New York City, and let me tell you, this one makes it look like a T.G.I. Friday’s.

As if the glass elevator ride up wasn’t impressive enough, the view out of the restaurant was amazing, as were our sushi and cocktails.

My INCA SWIZZLE - Tequila and dry chocolate liqueur are churned with freshly squeezed lemon juice and bitters

Christelle's TONKA BEAN OLD FASHIONED - Plantation Barbados 5 year infused with the powerful spiced flavour of tonka beans from the kumaru tree in South America. Finished with star anise and Benedictine (When it was presented to her, the waiter lit the sugar cane on fire, let it burn for a bit, then flipped it over and extinguished the burnt end in the drink)

Rebecca's NINA FRESA - Ketel One vodka is shaken with freshly squeezed lime, grapefruit, rhubarb bitters and guava juice and sweetened with strawberry purée

We sipped our drinks slowly, savoring them and our last hour together, before they caught the plane home.

To my surprise, I received a text from another Dance UL friend that weekend, informing me that she would be in London and asking to meet up for coffee the next day. I spent that Monday in my placement at the primary school, bouncing my knee, counting down the minutes until I got to go meet her. We spent just a short time catching up in the Starbucks at Waterloo Station, where she was to begin her journey back home to Manchester. It was as if we had not spent a day apart. We giggled, gossiped, joked around, and talked about future travel plans. I left the station, spirits high, with a green tinted view of the world.