Woke up on our last morning in Washington to a winter wonderland in the middle of Spring… a blanket of white snow at least six inches deep and freezing cold. We got ourselves sorted and called a cab and waited and waited and waited. Argh. Hate it when things don’t quite go to plan. Thankfully we had heaps of time up our sleeves having set the alarms for 5:30am when we had a 7:30am train. Eventually the guy turned up, and he tried to rip us off but whatever, Mr K dealt with him and we got to the station on time. Forgot how convenient wheels on your luggage are when you’re carrying stuff because you don’t want to drag your baggage through snow!
Our train trip was like flying through a blizzard, with snow flurries outside and a landscape that was entirely draped in white. We had a few delays though, thanks to 1) losing power?!, 2) having to move slower than normal due to snowy conditions, and 3) the doors freezing shut and passengers being unable to disembark/enter from certain carriages! No shit. I thought that was hilarious. 🙂
Anyway, we got to New York and pulled into Penn Station without too much ado, however these delays meant instead of arriving before the St Patrick’s Day Parades, we arrived just as they were kicking off. The cab taking us to the hotel had to take the long way around due to all the road closures.
We got to the hotel and checked in – staying at the iconic Waldorf Astoria bitches! Yep, we’re all class. 😛 And then hightailed it out onto the streets to catch some of this parade in action.
In New Orleans for Mardi Gras there were floats and then marching bands and then floats and then more marching bands… here we saw marching bands, and marching Irish clubs, marching bands and marchign cops, marching bands and marching firemen, marching bands and marching marines… and NO FLOATS!
Not only that, but there were no beads! And no one flashing their boobs to get beads! I don’t know what sort of parade you call this New York, but we were singularly unimpressed. What’s that you say? Oh, it’s celebrating a religious holiday… whoops, my mistake. That explains the lack of beads, boobs and floats. Doesn’t really explain the drunken locals spilling out of all the local Irish pubs though 🙂 There were plenty of people in a party mood, and plenty decked out in lots of green and shamrocks and Irish flags and ‘kiss me I’m Irish’ pins and t-shirt. Was all good fun acually.
Ah well, the lack of floats and beads all became a moot point as we eventually decided it was way too bloody cold to be outdoors watching the bagpipes and high school marching bands slowly file past (all 250,000 participants!), so we moved our St Patrick’s Day celebrations indoors to Connolly’s Pub for a quiet (yeah, right!) pint.
All up an exhausting, exciting and awesome day. We are settling into the Waldorf-Astoria nicely and looking forward to our stay here in New York – so much to see and do, I literally do no know where to start! – and because we are all class, we had a quintessentially American dinner in our room this evening, and ordered in some McDonalds… complete with St Patrick’s Day Shamrock Shakes! 😀