REPORT: Revelers from NYC to Dublin mark St. Patrick's Day

           
Crowds cheered and bagpipes bellowed during New York City's annual St. Patrick's Day parade, and people with a fondness for anything Irish began a weekend of festivities from the Louisiana bayou to Dublin.                       

With the holiday itself falling on a Sunday, many celebrations were scheduled instead for Saturday because of religious observances.                     

In New York, the massive parade, which predates the United States, was led by 750 members of the New York Army National Guard. The 1st Battalion of the 69th Infantry has been marching in the parade since 1851.                        

Hundreds of thousands lined the parade route in New York, cheering the marching bands, dance troupes and politicians.                     

In downtown Chicago, thousands along the Chicago River cheered as workers on a boat dumped dye into the water, turning it a bright fluorescent green for at least a few hours in an eye-catching local custom.                              

Thousands of revelers gaudily garbed in green crammed the oak-shaded squares and sidewalks of downtown Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday, for a celebration that's a 189-year-old tradition.                         

Led by bagpipers in green kilts, a parade kicked off Saturday morning, hours after customers began lining up at downtown bars. More than 1,000 worshippers also packed the pews of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist for the Mass that traditionally precedes the parade.                     

In Ireland, Dublin's five-day St. Patrick's Day festival was unfolding with a new addition. For the first time, up to 8,000 visitors from around the world were due to march in a so-called people's parade Sunday, when Ireland's capital city also intends hold its usual procession of bands and pageantry.                         

In Maine, St. Patrick's Day prompted Gov. Paul LePage to relent on a vow to veto any bill that reached his desk before lawmakers pass his proposal to pay a state debt to hospitals. He signed a measure Friday allowing bars to serve alcohol a few hours earlier than usual, starting at 6 am, on the Sunday holiday.                               

In Rolla, Missouri, the Missouri University of Science and Technology continued a St. Patrick's tradition that began in 1908, when students declared that the patron saint of Ireland also was the patron saint of engineers. A slate of events included a student portraying St. Patrick being transported downtown on a manure spreader.                           

Annapolis, Maryland, held its first St. Patrick's Day parade March 10. A 40-year-old parade tradition took on a sense of renewal March 3 in Belmar, New Jersey, a shore town that took a heavy blow from Superstorm Sandy.                           

But along with the festivities, in some places, came warnings from police that they would be on the lookout for drunken drivers and other misbehavior. Police in Baltimore and Washington both planned to increase patrols.                    

About 30,000 spectators soaked up the sun as Sydney's Irish-Australians paraded through the city. Australia always marks St. Patrick's Day on a Sunday. After the event, partiers rallying at the city's Hyde Park saw 45 Irish men and women receive Australian citizenship, an increasingly common event as tens of thousands of Irish job-seekers have emigrated to Australia each year since the 2008 collapse of Ireland's credit-driven Celtic Tiger boom.                    

The Duchess of Cambridge and husband Prince William also celebrated St. Patrick Day, where she presented sprigs of shamrock to soldiers in the annual ceremony at a barracks in Aldershot, southern England. She also pinned a spring on the collar of the regiment's mascot, an Irish wolfhound named Domhnall.


AP


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