How do you say St. Patrick’s Day in Espanol?

We sat there in the dark little restaurant, entranced. I’m not sure if it was the dancers. Every stomp of their feet. Every clap of their hands. Every twist of their wrists.

Or perhaps it was the singer, pounding on a drum with his shirt unbottoned and his curly hair falling around his face.

Who knows.

Either way, we couldn’t look away. All we could do was watch the fire in all their eyes as they performed for the audience. And sip on our white wine.

How did we end up in this basement restaurant full of locals and music and wine? What are the chances that the table of people we chatted to last night over our fifth and sixth glasses of wine were the band? Haha. Such luck.

The Flamenco dancers and the band

One of the dancers got up to do a solo. We watched and clapped along. Her passion and intensity somehow made me feel more empowered as a woman. Even though I have no idea what the lyrics of the song were. My Spanish is not yet that good. And I was definitely too distracted by the whole scene to try and actually listen what they were singing about.

We watched the singer continue to sing and sweat and drill holes through all of us with his stare… and brush his nose. And brush his nose again. And again… And it quickly became aparrent that the God-like Spanish man we had been sitting there pining over… had a bit of a cocaine habit.

Haha.

We sat there until it finished, around midnight, thanked our new friends for inviting us and took off. No, not to go home. The night was just beginning. Because this night wasn’t just any Saturday night.

It was St. Patrick’s Day.

My absolute favorite holiday of the year. And just because I was in Argentina, and had absolutely no idea if anyone there would be celebrating it, didn’t mean I was going to miss it. Hell no. I had researched and found there was an area of downtown with some Irish pubs and so we hopped in a cab, decked out in green (okay well not decked out like I would have been back home, but green shirts at least) and headed in that direction.

Well, let me tell you, they do celebrate it here.

And they celebrate it hard.

The taxi driver couldn’t even take us to the pub I had selected because the policia had blocked off the streets in this little section of town so no cars could drive through. Instead, the streets were filled with people. Drunk people. All in green.

I was in heaven.

We managed to smile at the right bouncer and jump the hour or so long line up and get right into a pub called the Kilkenny. Then after pushing and shoving our way to the crowded bar we managed to get our hands on a few pints. Then to the dance floor to hop around and sing along with a live band. Then back to the bar for a couple glasses of Jameson’s. Then outside to drink amoung the swarms. Then more Jameson’s. Then more. You get the idea.

We quickly made friends with some Columbians who invited us to an after party a few hours later and there we partied till the wee hours of the morning, in an apartment with an incredible view of the city. A St. Patrick’s Day to be remembered. (Or forgotten… we did have alot of whiskey.)

Some of our new friends

***

Sunday we woke up flustered and hungover… nope, still drunk. Yes, definitely still drunk. We had to check out of our hostel and get to our apartment by 11am. Bah! So early! I don’t even want to tell you what time we went to bed…. We had a quick but necessary shower at the hostel, even though there was no shower curtain. Haha. We didn’t want to turn up to meet our new school roommates with booze seeping out of our pores.

When we got to our apartment, we met our roommates quickly, didn’t retain either of their names, parked our suitcases, still packed, and climbed into our matching single beds to sleep the day away.

We needed to get some rest. The next morning was our first day of school….