St Patrick’s Week

I spent St Patrick’s Day in Dublin. Now, you’re probably expecting that we got spectacularly drunk and everyone sang Molly Malone. But Paddy’s Day for me was, in a word, anticlimactic. I didn’t go to the parade because I kind of hate parades, and I didn’t figure I’d like them any better in a foreign country. I did go out to a bar with some friends, I did wear a shamrock in my hair, and we did have a grand time. But I ended up back home before midnight relatively sober and generally irritated by the obscene number of tourists in the city centre (which was probably the most authentically Irish way to be on St Patrick’s Day anyway).

What was far more fun than Patrick’s Day was Patrick’s Week. See, the Dáil didn’t sit for the entire week, in observance, so aside from two classes and a quick stop by the office to check messages on Wednesday, I basically had another Spring Break. I decided to spend it in the one place I was promised to get sun and warm weather: the Canary Islands.

I flew out Thursday, and, after some delays due to air traffic controller strikes, landed that afternoon in Gran Canaria. The hostel was amazing. It was a block from the beach and had the best atmosphere of any place I’ve ever stayed. Thursday night, everyone from the hostel went out for tapas night, which I highly suggest we start having in the States. Basically, a bunch of places in the city serve tapas with a beer for two euro every Thursday.

I don’t have much else to report from Las Palmas. I spent every day laying out on the beach, got horribly sunburned (though it’s now faded into a tan and I’m currently the least pale person in Dublin), ate a lot of cheap food, and drank a lot of cheap beer. I can’t stress that cheap thing enough. Everything on the island is incomparably inexpensive. I bought a six pack of bottles for less than three euro. I ate lunch every day for less than four. A taxi from on end of the city to the other was six, split between four people. The most expensive part of the trip was airfare, and it wasn’t even that much.

I’ve tried to learn something in every country I’ve visited, but the biggest thing I learned in the Canaries was that I’ve picked up more Spanish than I previously realized just by growing up in a state so influenced by a Spanish-speaking culture. Unfortunately, as I also learned, most of the Spanish I know is directly related to Mexican food, making me just about useless in Spain. Unless, of course, you want más cerveza, por favor.