World turns green as Ireland celebrates
Source: Agencies |
March 18, 2010, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
MUCH of the world turned green yesterday for St Patrick's Day, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness.
More than half a million people lined the 3-kilometer route of the flagship Dublin parade beneath unusually sunny skies. The parade's theme, "The Extraordinary World," celebrated Ireland's increasing multiculturalism as well as the global spread of the Irish.
Mixed in with the usual displays of United States marching bands and Irish sporting heroes were dancing troupes from Africa and India, bands from Austria and France, giant insect floats from Spain and Dubliners dancing with mops and dusters.
The biggest laughs came from Waterford's entry: man-sized eggs with legs fighting bakers armed with wooden spoons. A singer standing in the middle of a massive frying pan and atop a similarly oversized fried egg belted out renditions of "Do the Funky Chicken" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens."
This year Ireland is pushing itself hard as a tourist destination as the country faces its worst recession since the Great Depression.
St Patrick's Day is Ireland's first major tourist event of the year, packing hotels and pubs with visitors seeking an all-night party. Ireland's weeklong festival gets bigger each year, with more than 100 parades yesterday in cities, towns and villages across the island of 6 million people.
The Tourism Ireland agency brokered a deal for major world landmarks - including the Sydney Opera House, London Eye, Toronto's CN Tower and New York's Empire State Building - to be bathed in green floodlights as part of a marketing push on four continents.
The parade in New York - the biggest of hundreds throughout North America - began on Fifth Avenue with as many as a quarter of a million marchers.
The celebration of Irish heritage and culture in New York featured bands, bagpipes and grand marshal Ray Kelly, the city's police commissioner.
More than half a million people lined the 3-kilometer route of the flagship Dublin parade beneath unusually sunny skies. The parade's theme, "The Extraordinary World," celebrated Ireland's increasing multiculturalism as well as the global spread of the Irish.
Mixed in with the usual displays of United States marching bands and Irish sporting heroes were dancing troupes from Africa and India, bands from Austria and France, giant insect floats from Spain and Dubliners dancing with mops and dusters.
The biggest laughs came from Waterford's entry: man-sized eggs with legs fighting bakers armed with wooden spoons. A singer standing in the middle of a massive frying pan and atop a similarly oversized fried egg belted out renditions of "Do the Funky Chicken" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens."
This year Ireland is pushing itself hard as a tourist destination as the country faces its worst recession since the Great Depression.
St Patrick's Day is Ireland's first major tourist event of the year, packing hotels and pubs with visitors seeking an all-night party. Ireland's weeklong festival gets bigger each year, with more than 100 parades yesterday in cities, towns and villages across the island of 6 million people.
The Tourism Ireland agency brokered a deal for major world landmarks - including the Sydney Opera House, London Eye, Toronto's CN Tower and New York's Empire State Building - to be bathed in green floodlights as part of a marketing push on four continents.
The parade in New York - the biggest of hundreds throughout North America - began on Fifth Avenue with as many as a quarter of a million marchers.
The celebration of Irish heritage and culture in New York featured bands, bagpipes and grand marshal Ray Kelly, the city's police commissioner.
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