Monday, March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day! Once a year, it’s your chance to be Irish — so, adorn yourself with green from head to toe (and avoid getting pinched…unless you like that sort of thing - yow!)

St. Patty’s Day is all about shamrocks, green beer, leprechauns, and corn beef! There are festivals, like the Guiness St. Patrick’s Day Festival at Riverfront Park, NC where you can experience Irish music, dance, food, artisans, and booth displays.

For additional local festivities and parades, try the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Concert at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, CA, featuring Irish bagpipers, Irish bands, street performers, and floats. There’s also the Harrisburg St. Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Harrisburg, PA or the Saint Patrick’s Day Celebration in Grand Ledge, MI…just to name a few!

For those wild, late night party-goers, check out the Miller Lite ShamRock St. Patrick’s Day Block Party in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp District where thousands flock to the area to experience live music, hot DJs, great food and green beer with 40,000 sq ft of Astroturf (cool!) in the streets!

If you’re looking for a more sophisticated outing, enjoy the Thistle and Shamrock: California Philharmonic Pays Tribute to Celtic Culture performance on Saturday night to see the Cabar Feidh pipe band and Celtic dancers.

But, if you’re interested in something more low-key, you might want to head over to your nearby local pub for a tall glass of Guinness!

• Gene McCarthy’s Irish Pub in Buffalo, NY
• Kell’s Irish Pub and Restaurant in San Francisco, CA
• O’Shea’s Irish Pub in Charlotte, NC
• O’Donoghue’s Irish Pub in Scottsdale, AZ

And to depart with an Irish blessing:

“May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day. May songbirds serenade you ever step along the way. May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that’s always blue. And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Flickr Photo Credits: Shamrock by jciv and Leprechaun by OZinOH’s

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While perusing our fine dining establishments for the coming holiday, we discovered an amusing opportunity for a road trip that takes us to the best local restaurants in towns with coincidental names. The trip was too enjoyable not to share with you Zvents’ 2008 dining road trip, a whirlwind, foodie tour of the United States through the most unusual of towns.

Start with an early morning wake up call in the aptly named Collins Mississippi suburb of Hot Coffee. The moon pies at this area “mini mall” may not be your idea of a healthy breakfast but you can’t argue that the coffee must be world renowned; after all, they’ve named the town after it. So skip the moon pies grab a cuppa joe as we head to Bacon, IN, Buttermilk, KS, and Two Egg, FL for something to fill that belly. I like my eggs scrabbled but at Mary’s Breakfast Nook just outside Bacon or around the corner from Two Egg at the Huddle House, you can get them any way you want. Pancakes and Eggs not your cup of Tea? (hang on… we’ll get to Tea) Sit tight for the annual Oatmeal Festival brought to you by Oatmeal, TX and Quaker Oats. Every September, thousands flock to Bertram, TX (yeah I know, why isn’t it in Oatmeal, TX?) where you are encouraged “bring your honey to Oatmeal”

From Two Egg, we’re off to Sandwich, MA just 20 miles south of Boston and Tortilla Flat, AZ for lunch. We suggest Bobby Byrne’s Sandwich in Sandwich or Sluggo’s Sports Bar near Tortilla Flats (you expected Mexican didn’t you?). With Tortilla Flat just east of Phoenix, you have an endless list of options for lunch so consider this ‘free time’ from our tight schedule and enjoy the warmth and sun.

Back in the car we’re driving through Tea, South Dakota on our way to Kaladis Coffee Legend and Bistro for that mid-day snack to tide you over till dinner. If you are good in the car, we’ll stop in Pie Town, NM and swing by The Adobe Cafe and Bakery for a treat.

For dinner, we’re torn between a Picnic in Florida, there is the little market just off (ahem) Picnic St. in Port Charlotte, or some Good food around Goodfood, MS; Ragtime in Grenada is a great choice.

From there we leave you to your own devices. Search Zvents and discover amazing places to eat like Cheesequake, NJ,   Sugarland, TX, or Ham Lake, Minnesota where we should remind you to wait 20 minutes before going swimming.

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Over the next couple days you will notice a dramatic expansion of our Restaurant search product as we index over 250,000 restaurants throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.

People searching for things to do can already book reservations with OpenTable’s 6,400 restaurants and simply search for restaurants by cuisine, price, or distance from an address. With the additions, we’re covering just about every interest with chains including Jamba Juice, Starbuck’s, and McDonald’s, larger restaurants such as Outback Steakhouse, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and Applebee’s and excellent choices for dates or business dinners with Jardiniere in San Francisco, TRU in Chicago, or Chanterelle in New York.

Planning dinner and a movie? We’ve had movies covered with thousands of theaters and millions of show times; now discover much more cuisine to wet your appetite.

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We’ve had our heads down for weeks; prepping what I think is the best Movie experience online. As your search engine for things to do, it was obvious to us that while discovering festivals, concerts, and dance and cooking classes satiates most of your desires, we all take time out to catch a movie at the local Cineplex. So, building on the experience you’ve come to love from Zvents, we rolled out a tremendous cinema database promoting almost a million movie show times at more than 7,000 theaters throughout the United States and Canada.

Theaters are automatically sorted by distance from you, ensuring relevant options as you search for movies by genre, actor, rating, or city. We’ve left no film uncovered, with the latest in action and animation to more selective tastes for fans of the classics. So find your films, become a critic, and Discover Movies.

Oh, by the way, make an event of that night at the movies. We’ve added restaurant recommendations near your favorite theaters leaving you no excuse but dinner and drinks on that date!

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