The Nation's Largest Irish Festival.....

AKA "Eat it Chicago, we're clearly better than you.". SKA "Go back to your own city!!!"

Milwaukee Irish Fest is, in fact, the largest Irish festival in the United States. That's right. AND! It's a tradition amongst members of the Irish side of my family to go there every year. For multiple days. It's a 4-day festival, we usually hit 3 of them. I promised my mother a long time ago back when she was worried that I was moving out of Milwaukee because I hated her that as long as I was able to get back for the festival, I would be there. I almost missed it this year....................I'm so glad I didn't.

I could tell you the story about how my mom was here (the St. Paul festival is the weekend before) for the whole week and she and I were going to head back to Milwaukee (via bus.....yes....no I'm not kidding) on Thursday, hit the fest Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday, and then I'd bus back Sunday night. I could also tell you that for the second time in less than a month, some d-bag decided to stand in front of a train, I missed the bus. But I won't. I'll just tell you that I learned that if you're willing to leave ridiculously early in the morning, it only costs $97 to fly round-trip to Milwaukee for a weekend from here. Now you know.

So I got to the fest. The weather had actually decided that it would be summer for the weekend, so it was hot. But! There's no stopping us really. I'll talk about the highlights for a bit, then I'll post some photos, then I'll tell you that if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of the Milwaukee Irish Fest......you should go. Come find me...I'll buy you a beer. As my uncle Pat always says.......you can find me at the closest beer tent to the entrance.

We saw Salsa Celtica again. They played pretty much the same set as they did in St. Paul, but they had borrowed a fiddle player from a band called Slide and he was FANTASTIC. And fun to watch. How anyone plays a violin that quickly while jumping up and down I will never know. So we made sure to watch the Slide show too......which was good. But! The big event of the year was that it was Gaelic Storm's 10th anniversary at Milwaukee Irish Fest. They love Milwaukee. They love our festival. They play all 4 nights there. And Milwaukee loves them. The 10th anniversary shows were, as I expected, phenomenal. Another band that if you ever get a chance to see anywhere, you should see. They're just a ton of fun. Another highlight this year.....Miller ACTUALLY having an Irish beer (all the beer sales on festival grounds are contracted to Miller with the exception of the Sprecher, Lakefront, Leinenkugel's, and Water Street Brewery tents......for obvious reasons *cough*Millerwaukee*cough*). It was called something like Paddy Stout or something like that. I was skeptical because it came from Miller, but it sure LOOKED like stout. And it tasted pretty flipping good.

There were the usual annoyances. By which I mean everyone from Chicago feeling like they need to make sure to wear something that says Cubs or White Sox on it, just so we know they think they're better than us. (I should note here that I was more than a bit miffed that this was a
Sox shirt and that it didn't come in the Twins variety)

There was also me NOT being able to buy green Brewers shirts and ONLY seeing green Cubs/Sox shirts at the vendor booths and being seriously mad about it.

Other than that......the fest was awesome. Flying between MSP and MKE is both stupid and awesome. I will likely continue to fly back there whenever non-car travel is required. And I'll definitely be back for Irish Fest 2010.......30 years of being AWESOME in Milwaukee.