Sunshine brings huge crowd onto the streets for parade

Date Published: 17-Mar-2011

by Dearbhla Geraghty

It is many years since children could play hurling, Gaelic football, soccer, and rugby on the streets of Galway, but it was a free for all during yesterday’s St Patrick’s Day Parade.

Gardai estimate that the dry weather brought out up to 75,000 people – mostly families – who lined the route between the fire station and Eyre Square, in a event that went off without incident.

It would not be too far off to say that practically all were proudly ‘wearing the green’, or some variation of it – whether it was shamrock glasses, hats, scarves, earrings, necklaces, disco boppers, tattoos, face paints, feather boas, batons, flags, bandanas, grass skirts, and the traditional sprig of shamrock, of course.

They began choosing the best vantage points more than an hour before the parade was even due to start at 12.30pm. In fact, such were the massive crowds that eventually made up the audience that large numbers sprawled out from beyond the start and end points of the parade.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.