The Irish are coming.
On Wednesday, shamrock-plastered bars in Midtown New York were filled with Irish visitors looking to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day away from home.
“Everyone just wants to get out of Ireland for a bit,” Jamie Andrews, 26, said to The Post as he drank a Guinness with half a dozen friends, all of whom had come over from the Emerald Isle to party and enjoy NYC’s first holiday without COVID restrictions.
“It’s really massive over here,” Andrews said of opting to celebrate in the Big Apple. He and his mates have big plans to wear green leprechaun suits today and drink Guinness all around town.
The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade is the oldest and largest in the world, according to organizers. After two consecutive years of cancellations, the 2022 parade is expecting big crowds from around the world.
Sisters Ciara, Mary-Kate and Marguerite Hamill are happy to be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day together in New York City. Brian Zak/NY Post
The Hamill sisters — Ciara, 35, Mary-Kate, 40, and Marguerite, 41 — also came over from Ireland to celebrate.
Mary-Kate remembered being isolated and joining a Zoom call last year in an attempt to honor the holiday amid the pandemic and thinking, “This is the worst.”
This year, the sisters were excited to be together and go big.
“It’s just lovely having the whole ambiance,” Mary-Kate said as she sat next to a massive shamrock sign drinking a beer at Connolly’s, on 45th Street at Sixth Avenue, on Wednesday.
In preparation for massive and rowdy crowds flooding to Manhattan to drink green beer and don “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” pins, many pubs were itching to book Gaelic entertainment.
Musician Sean Magee, 27, said venues were eager to schedule him to play some true Irish jigs. He flew over from Ireland with Áine McGirr, 26, who is expecting bars to be so packed, you can’t grab a drink.
Musician Sean Magee, 27, and Áine McGirr, 26, enjoyed festive Bud Lights as they awaited the arrival of their Irish friends in New York City. Brian Zak/NY Post“I think it will be mental,” McGirr said as she and Magee sat at Kevin’s Pub in Midtown drinking Bud Lights in green shamrock-covered bottles as they waited for their other Irish friends to land.
“It’s gonna be crazy,” exclaimed Magee, who is playing Haswell Green’s pub, on 52nd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, on St. Patrick’s Day. “Hopefully, people will just jump up and join me on the stage . . . It will be a sea of green.”
