St. Patty's Day, Scottish Style

At first, we had thought to head over to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day for a real taste of Irish celebrations. I've always been in favor of making March 17 an official US holiday, and I love a people who celebrate a man who got rid of snakes...

Good think we decided against going, though, because I'm pretty sure all of Ireland was in Edinburgh for the night. In a showing much larger and more boisterous than that on Halloween, the Irish poured out of the woodwork for a chance to parade around in green beer goggles and silly leprachaun costumes. Irish accents abound (some of them awfully suspect), Jonmikel and I headed off into Old Town to one of our local hangouts, the Grassmarket Bar, for some sustenance and our first beer of the night. A Guinness for me, of course! We watched idly as a group of rowdy but harmless leprechauns pranced in, ordered a bunch of Miller Geniune Drafts (I know, right!), and proceeded to surround a table and look at presumably unappetizing photos on their cell phones. One of them, in an effort to keep the room from spinning, I'm sure, took an odd interest in us as we watched them. He then proceeded to take a part his phone in order to switch the sim card, never a good idea while drunk as he soon found out. It's fun to watch drunk people try to operate normally. :-)

We then headed out to make our way slowly back to home, stopping at various bars along the way. We stopped at one amazingly over-priced and packed-to-the-gills bar, complete with festively-dressed skeletons on the walls. We also managed to stop at Bar Salsa, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place always packed full because of its astoundingly low (for the UK) booze prices, including 1.75 drinks before 9:30 pm and 2 pound mixed-drinks afterwards. Its also attracts a fairly young, local and regular crowd. They always seem to know the bartenders and each other, and are more than friendly to newcombers. Last time we were approached by a girl who wanted her picture taken with "The Dude," and this time we were approached by a very drunk Scot wearing large, Elton-John-ish star glasses and speaking with a very slurred and impossible to understand accent. He was delighted to hang out with us for a few minutes, and from what I could gather, was going to get married in 4 weeks and really didn't want to. A couple of wonderfully emo 20-somethings arrived, wearing their pants way down past their butts in a lame attempt to be like black American bad-asses. I couldn't help clandestinely taking thier picture because it just looked so bad, and I wasn't the only one getting a kick out of their decidely silly, counter-culture outfits. They all wore eye-liner and had edgy hair, too, just for further illustration. The best part about this particular crowded bar, aside from the cheap drinks, was that they actually play British music, as opposed to the American stuff every other bar seems to play. So we got to hear some new tunes, including some very Key West-ish electronica.

The night was pretty mellow and fabulous, with plenty of revelers of all ages out and about until all hours. I have to admit, I didn't know Edinburgh could hold so many Irishmen, though I suppose it's a testament to the fact that no Scottish people actually attend the University of Edinburgh.