The Rose of Tralee
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
36
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Tralee,
Ireland
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
"The 2006 Rose of Tralee International Festival promises to be five days of fun, spectacle & glamour. The streets of Tralee will ignite with concerts, band recitals and street performers. This year's parade - organised by carnival costume & float creators, Artastic - promises to be the biggest to date, with bands from all over Ireland. Come and witness the greatest free show on earth and party under the spectacular street lighting by night. It's a festival for all ages with Rose Parades, Birds Amusements, Céile on the Street, Firework Displays, Mary Black, Tabby, Republic of Loose, Lucia Evans, Newbridge Fashion Show and much, much more."
Plus there is a quasi-beauty pageant based on the song where Irish chicks from around the world try to be selected as the most Irish, or prettiest, or talented, or something
B&B View
. No one could tell me the criteria for judging. The final two days are on TV and got a 45% share this share, despite everyone slagging it off for being a beauty pageant. You can read about it here - http://roseoftralee.ie/catalog/ .As for me, I never saw a Rose, although I did see some friends of one of the Australian Roses at a pub for dinner wearing sashes proclaiming their loyalty. The Roses, it seems, did events all day that required a ticket (introductory ball) or sucked ass (a fashion show). Plus, they have formal escorts the whole time. The locals, unless they were directly uninvolved with the festival, seemed to care less (one cabbie told me that he would gave gone to the World Fleadh in Ballybunnion last weekend instead, had he been me). For example, no one seemed to know who the Roses were or cared who won. It basically seemed an excuse to have lost of traditional Celtic music and have the bars stay open late for five nights in a row. I did, however, learn that there was a San Francisco Rose but the odds on her were 20-1 to begin with and jumped to 50-1 when she was not selected to have her "party piece" featured on television. See ya.
As for Tralee itself, it is in county Kerry in the southwest and not terribly big. It again rained off and on the whole time I was there, thwarting my desire to play Dooks or Tralee Links, and making watching the bands outdoors rather unenjoyable, so I ended up spending most of my time at the bookmakers betting on the PGA Championship, watching it in pubs, and trying to understand the culchie (derogative Dubliner name for rural Irish) accent
Bandstand
. I also watched the Gaelic Football semi-final featuring Kerry v. Cork with a city full of people wearing green and gold Ciarrai (Kerry in Gaelic) jerseys. Um, the game needs help. Not like soccer needs help, but it is pretty boring to watch also, although it looks like it would be fun to play.My final observation (this has to be quick because I have to get to a historical pub tour) is that I finally figured out what bothered me about the women in pubs in Cork (and here) - they are trashy. They are bridge and tunnel, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Fremont, skanky. They have bad feathered hair, apply their makeup with a spatula, wear cheesy outfits, and are overwieght. In sum, they look exactly like the girls in every mall in North America. I can't figure out why, except that maybe it is linked to the large Irish immigrant populations in America. In other words, blame Ireland, blame Ireland.
As noted, I have to run. Next, though, is my return to Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
