@Caitjohns22
It’s St Patty’s!!
Mar 17 2019
@Caitjohns22
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Trafalgar Square
Mar 17 2019

Sooooooo I’m not in Ireland, but I am in the UK! London impressed me with the number of people that showed up to celebrate St Patty’s \240🇮🇪

I decided to head down to Trafalgar Square to watch London’s parade at noon. I had sorted my way down (first time taking a double decker bus!) and packed snacks. Clearly I’m new to using public transport, because it didn’t occur to me that the roads would be closed for the parade, and therefore the bus routes would be affected. So I took the bus most of the way there, and did some serious speed walking past Green Park station to get to the parade on time. \240Lesson learned!

I ended up watching from a few different points because the crowd was so deep so I saw a couple things twice. \240The parade had bands, a lot of wacky costumes, and plenty of Irish dancers.

I’m not sure why, but in addition to typical Irish shenanigans ☘️ there were also a lot of other cultural groups. My favourite was between a Mexican guy with the best fringe chaps, and a Latin group (maybe Peruvian?) that had a llama as their mascot. It was great confusing friends from soccer with that photo (we have a long running joke about llamas) when they knew I was at a parade for March 17.

The National Gallery was also on the day plan to do list but because of the way they blocked off the square I didn’t get to go inside. \240Probably not a bad idea to keep the door closed when all the drunks are running around. So instead I walked around and window shopped on Regent Street and on the walk home took a new route through Notting Hill and saw the nicest homes in my neighbourhood!

What impressed me most was that within 30 minutes of the parade finishing the tape had been taken down, the crowd cleared mostly and transport was up and running as usual! I still did quite the walking, around 16 thousand steps.

Sore feet tomorrow!

@Caitjohns22