My Most Memorable St. Patrick’s Day

So since I feel on the verge of coming down with a full-blown something awful, I decided to stay in tonight, have a beer or two, and reminisce about my favorite St. Patrick’s Day so far. And lucky for you, I decided to take you along for the ride! So hop on board the Memory Express! First (and only) stop: 2007. (Okay, that sounded really lame and stupid and I promise never to evoke a fictional train ride ever again.) divbr /For St. Patrick’s Day 2007, my friend a href=”http://www.examiner.com/x-39655-Marina-District-Restaurant-Examiner”Jenna /aand I decided to go to Savannah on a whim. And when I mean, “on a whim,” I’m not exaggerating. We were hanging out at her place the Wednesday before the holiday weekend, talking about places we’d eventually like to visit and going halvsies on a shack in Honduras in which we would spend the rest of our days (you think I’m kidding), when she mentioned she’d like to go to the St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah. At that point in our lives we were pretty disgruntled–I had just graduated college that December and was working a crappy temp job while applying for public relations jobs, and she was in her last semester of college and extremely stressed out. So when she mentioned going to Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day on that Wednesday, we both looked at each other and said, in effect, “Screw life! Let’s go!” /divdivbr /Now you may or may not know this, but Savannah is an extremely small host to one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the U.S. Needless to say, hotels book up months in advance, so the chances of us, having decided to trek up there only the Wednesday before the big celebration, finding a hotel were slim to none. But talk about the luck of the Irish being on our side: we scored a hotel room online at an Econo Lodge just over the bridge from Savannah in South Carolina. That following Friday, we loaded up the Burgundy Bitch (my 2006 Ford Focus) with luggage, snacks (which we delved into five minutes after we hit the road–you think I’m kidding) and CDs and drove up to Savannah to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. /divdivbr /Now I won’t bore you with the day-by-day details of the trip, but trust me–it was a blast. We hit up multiple bars, witnessed minors getting arrested outside of one of the squares (pure entertainment), fended off a rude Danish boy who kept asking to see my breasts, battled some sort of weird stomach bug (well, Jenna did), and shared a shuttle ride back to the hotel with members of a rugby team who invited us to Waffle House, where they bought us breakfast (random, I know). We also cured our hangover munchies the next day with food from Paula Deen’s restaurant, The Lady and Sons, where I’m pretty sure Jenna was about to have a heart attack from pure excitement. (In response to the restaurant’s gift shop clerk telling her that the cookbook she was buying was autographed, Jenna exclaimed, “Oh my gosh I love Paula Deen, I watch the Food Network all the time!” Just like that, in an overjoyed run-on sentence. You think I’m kidding.) /divdiv/divimg style=”TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 203px; CURSOR: hand” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449732585047865106″ border=”0″ alt=”" src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SEtHXu9tF_U/S6FW6YSmNxI/AAAAAAAAAQc/J6em5C-6Efo/s320/n5000589_36206686_1586.jpg” / div align=”center”strongspan style=”font-size:78%;”Jenna and I at The Lady and Sons/span/strong/divdivbr //divdivTalk about a memorable St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and by far one of my favorites. I hope to one day go back (with Jenna, of course), but in the meantime I think I’ll raise a glass to good times, friendship, and St. Patrick himself. Cheers, my dears, and I hope you all have a very fun (and safe!) St. Patrick’s Day. /div