St. Patrick's Day.

It's been over a week since I last updated this. Poor effort, I know, but i've simply been too busy! Luckily, the French have realised this, and hastily arranged a strike for today to let me catch up.

I'll start with St. Patrick's day. No, i'm not Irish, and I don't think I have a drop of Irish blood in me, but when there's an English-speaking celebration in France, I have to join in!

Now I don't know about Ireland, but in England, St. Patrick's day is a fairly understated day, where the pubs try to take advantage of people by putting green dye in their beer and charging them double. In nantes, St. Patrick is a major evening out. There's three 'Irish' pubs in Nantes, and we were going to wander around them and see which one had the best atmosphere. That was, until we saw this:


You'd never even know it's France.

John McByrne's was overflowing, with hundreds of people int he streets, and all the pubs in the area had brought out portable bars into the road. Irish music was being blasted out of the speakers, and everyone was having a generally good time.


Not a particularly good photo, but there were a troupe of bagipipers who marched throught the crowd at one point.

We stayed until about midninght, as I had a full day of teaching the next day. In the four hours that we were there, I met only one Irish person, and i'm pretty sure that he was putting the accent on himself. The only words he seemed to say were 'Guinness', 'Paddy' and 'potatoes'. Suspect.