St. Patrick's Day in Chicago: Everyone's Irish!

"If you're enough lucky to be Irish, you're lucky enough!" ~Irish Saying

At long last....it's here! The St. Paddy's Day Chicago-style recap! Prepare for picture overload!

As y'all know, I headed to Chicago last weekend to celebrate St. Paddy's Day in style! I have had seeing the green river on my bucket list for quite some time, but I have to admit I did not realize how awesome the St. Patrick's Day experience would be!They say that on St. Patrick's Day that everyone is Irish....and I'm here to tell you....it was true! From reading all of the fun sayings on green shirts, to getting to spend three days was one of my favorite people--ND Friend, to all the chaos in the streets, to pubs ordering 1,300 pounds of corn beef for the day, to meeting a new friend--Tiny Dancer, to now having a love for Irish music, to gaining like 10 pounds...the weekend was a total and complete success!Friday

When ND Friend picked me up, we went straight from the airport to Bongo Room for some of these babies. Below you see pretzel pancakes covered in white chocoalte and caramel and you see pumpkin pancakes crusted in graham crackers with chocolate chunks baked in covered in vanilla bean sauce and cinnamon. Heaven on a plate, folks.
After that, we took a stroll all along Millenium Park and the Magnificant Mile, did a little shopping, and enjoyed the city. Then we headed to pick up our race packets, got pedicures (and caught up on all of our trashy celeb magazines), had dinner at an amazing pizza place, and headed out to meet some of ND Friend's friends to watch the Notre Dame v. Xavier game at an Irish pub. Not a bad way to kick off the weekend of fun!
Saturday

And then, the big day was upon us. We got up bright and early and headed for downtown to check out the river dyeing. This was, after all, the bucket list item that got me to Chicago for St. Patrick's Day. And it was awesome. People everywhere on the streets decked out in green, pubs overflowing even at 9 am, bagpipers all over the place. Got an A in my book.
The river dyeing was amazing. We had a front row seat to all the fun (despite the police officer who kept trying to tell us to exit the bridge.....my rationale for staying...they can't arrest us all!) Check it out!

We then headed for the parade (with a quick stop at The Bean...what trip to Chicago is complete without that picture).

While there we met some crazy college kid. He's included on the blog because of two funny lines. First, he walks up in his short shorts and crazy outfit and turns to a group of three middle aged woman and says, "This is base camp, right here, with the hot moms!" Later, he told a girl standing next to us, "Listen, you're all freckly and kind of pasty white and usually I might make fun of you becasue I'm tanner than you are, but not today. Today is your day to shine. Today we celebrate you. It's your day." We then discussed my issue of instantly liking the crazy, fun, life of the party guy and how I have to stop that. Ha!

Here are a few shots from the parade.
After all this, we headed to Lincoln Park where we ate at the best BBQ restauraunt (called Q) and then hit up O'Brien's--a classic Irish Pub (that it took us like an hour and a half in line to get into). Well worth it--we had a few drinks and listened to an awesome Irish band!

That's where our friend earned his blog name....Tiny Dancer for his Irish dancing skills. Apparently Irish boys get girls to throw themselves at them on St. Patrick's Day just by standing in a bar. Who knew? His new "friend" was named Liz and she was quite taken with Tiny Dancer.We finished off the night with a party hosted by ND Friend's running club--complete with sausage bread and mini corn beef sandwiches and Irish Car Bombs (which I did not do---not a chance...Bailey's curdles at the bottom of the glass....not for this girl!) and then a green beer at another Irish Pub complete with a live band.
Sidenote--both bands played "Wagon Wheel" which I do not consider Irish, but totally Red Dirt Music---I think it was fate! Favorite Irish song....Gallaway Girl. For now---but Tiny Dancer has offered to make me a cd, which excites me!

I also must report on our photo scavenger hunt. We started out the day with 5 goal subjects to get photos with. We wound up accomplishing 3/5. Here were our successes! This little game, by the way, will not officially be part of every vacation I ever take.

Sunday

Because I'm a genius, I suggested that we run a race the day after all of the eating like pigs and Irish Pub appearances. I've got to re-evalute this idea.

We started off the morning with Mass at St. Clements--a beautiful Catholic church in Lincoln Park. If you're into churches, you should go see this one! Then we headed out to run the 8K St. Paddy's Day Run. My ultimate goal was to run it at under a 10 minute per mile pace. I've run a 5K at a 9:30 before, but for any longer race, I've always been about 10:30. Official result: 9:59 minutes/mile. Not too bad. And now I can say that I ran a race with a Boston Marathon finisher....although I'm sure she probably felt like she was walking and couldn't wait to get rid of me and get back to her 7 minute pace!
We also had a little altercation with some total (I would use a curseword here if it wasn't Lent and I hadn't said I was going to stop that) girl who got all snippy with me and told me to watch where I ran because I cut her off. And guess what? The professional photographers caught it on tape. I can't copy the darn picture on the blog, but trust me, it's funny.

Now, let me first say this. If you are Kara Goucher or Paula Radcliffe and you have any shot at winning a race, by all means, care about being cut off. But listen honey, if you're running anywhere near me, your shot at winning the race is non-existent and one little ALLEGED cut off is not going to cause you the Olympics. Get over yourself. By the way, for the record, about 200 yards after this picture, ND Friend and I passed her again. And I finished ahead of her. Karma, honey. Karma.

And then, alas, it was time to go home. Before we did, we stopped once again at....you guessed it...Bongo Room. Listen, I don't get to Chicago that often! This time we opted for eggs and only ordered one yummy chocolate drenched pancake. It was a fitting goodbye to an amazing weekend! Until next time, Chicago!