St. Patrick's Eucharist

Hello!
This morning, Ke'leigh and I attended the Eucharist at St. Patrick's cathedral. It was absolutely beautiful. There were only about 20 people, and about 15 of those were younger visitors, but it was perfect. We walked around the side of the building and followed an older lady who looked like she knew where she was going. We followed her in the back entrance of the church and around the back of the main Cathedral to the Lady's chapel on the side. Brooke told me yesterday that the Lady's chapel was referring to Mary. We sat down in the only seats left in the front row, contrary to years of a baptist upbringing. As I sat down, my chair moved against the floor resulting in a horribly loud squeak, echoing out of the Lady's chapel to reverberate throughout the entire Cathedral. Or at least that's how it sounded to me. I got settled, prepared to be holy and all that jazz, but then I dropped my camera. (I promis that doesn't happen very often.) The clink was even louder and proclaimed me as with a loudspeaker, "I am a tourist! And a clutzy one at that!" I just looked forward and pretended as if I hadn't dropped the obviously dropped camera, just glancing down at it gazing up at me sadly from the thousand year old tiles. I removed my sweater and my purse and placed them ever so carefully on top of the camera to cover up the evidence. No such thing ever happened.
The stained glass windows surrounded us with beautiful images. Every arch seemed to draw the eye upward even further and further. As the priest came out, the sun came out behind the clouds and it seemed as if the light were emanating from the upper left stained glass window depicting Christ as shepherd. It was surreal. The priest said some stuff in latin. We followed the lady on our left when to stand, sit down, and kneel. I don't know what we would have done without her. She saved our butts.
I thought I was familiar with the liturgy, but the priest led it with a quick Irish accent, flowing speedily through passages, and pausing for inordinately long moments of silence at every period and comma. I wish I had done CX debate to prepare me for such skill and speed. I am sure that I uttered many a blasphemy in my rush to get out words, and then filling the silence with my slow, loud, Texan drawl.
When it was time for communion, an older man with a greying suit and flannel plaid tie gets up very officially and jerkily walks to the front to extend the bar on which we were to lean to receive communion.
The communion was great. The bread was delicious, and I actually enjoyed the wine. Last time I had communion with wine, it tasted like soap, but I guess the Irish St. Patty's church can afford some good booze.
EDIT: We talked to the old lady on our left afterwards. Her name is Elizabeth. She went to Trinity College in Dublin. Her teeth were absolutely horrible. Missing, rotten, but her sweet smile covered all the faults of the medium of her teeth. She was very curious in what we had done for our stay, what classes we were going to take, and what we were planning on doing with our lives. It was as lovely experience and I am so glad I had the experience to talk with her. As we were walking out, she and the communion dude, whose name happened to be Leslie, discussed how they should share the duties of helping out with the service. He offered us a free look around the church, but we politely declined because we had just visited the previous day. Elizabeth talked with us a little bit longer and remarked that she hoped to see Ke'leigh around if she happened to go to Trinity College for grad school. We parted ways, and we walked all over Dublin for about an hour to give it a proper goodbye, then back to the hotel, coach, plane, coach, dorm.