Tens of thousands of people lined Constitution Avenue on a bright spring day in Washington DC yesterday to celebrate the city's 30th St Patrick's Day parade. It's the national march, they said, and, although it was much smaller than New York's gigantic festivities next week, no one was going to argue.
It was led by four generations of the McAuliffe family, followed by the Metropolitan Police Department, the Fire Service and the armed services.
Dancers from the many local Irish dance schools streamed down the road from the Capitol past the reviewing stands in front of the White House, from where the Irish Ambassador, Mr Sean O hUiginn, watched.
Politics was represented by a Northern Aid contingent and one from the Loyal and Patriotic Order of Irish-American Reaganites - three sports cars brimming with flag-waving children. The Fairfax County Ancient Order of Hibernians injected a somewhat un-PC flavour by parading a Confederate flag.
High-kicking high school bands from as far away as Florida, more Disney than Dub, interspersed patriotic airs with jazzed-up hits from the cinema, from Roddy McCorley to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
There was a particularly cheery greeting to a contingent of veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, one of them carrying a Tricolour that certainly never saw combat, but then this is a celebration of Irish-America as much as of Ireland.
