Across the pond and lagging the usual 5 hours, New York does the Mother of all parades. It may be cold, but that does not hinder the partying of this Irish rooted immigrant community. Around 34 million Americans claim Irish ancestry so it’s a good thing they moved out of the tiny Emerald Isle, to be sure.

Of course, the best place to find the most authentic Irish cuisine and celebrations is in an Irish bar, if you can squeeze through the door. The New York parade runs along the Fifth Avenue, best known for its upmarket boutiques, and it starts at 11am and finishes around 5pm, if you’re lucky. Some of the best views can be seen from Central Park, or from a live New York webcam on Times Square ! Checkout Alary’s bar webcam for more St Patrick’s Day action in St Paul’s, Minneapolis.

Sharpen your knowledge of St Patrick with a few facts below:

Although St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland he was born in Britain around 385AD.

He was captured as a boy and carried off to Ireland as a slave herding sheep.

He later returned to Ireland as a missionary to the pagan Celts.

He used the shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity in his preaching.

March 17 AD461 is the date of the death of St Patrick and is a national holiday in Ireland, Newfoundland and on the island of Montserrat!

The largest festivities in the southern hemisphere are in Sydney , which are probably also the warmest.

St Patrick is attributed to driving all snakes and serpents out of Ireland.

A popular toast on St Patrick’s Day says: “May the roof above us never fall in, and may we friends beneath it never fall out”.

And on that happy note, cheers and have a great St Patrick’s Day!

Valencia on the Costa Blanca is known for its sandy beaches, historic mountain villages and its lively entertainment. The area is well covered with live webcams of Valencia’s best attractions. Right now they are gearing up for one of the biggest festivals of the year (of which there are several!). Las Fallas “Fire festival” begins on March 15, 2010 and lasts for a whole week of fun. It celebrates St Joseph, who was of course a carpenter, and Las Fallas are his monuments. The Fiesta attracts an amazing 2 million people to see the parade of giant papier-mâché characters, mostly caricatures of well known political figures and famous international figures. However, being featured in the parade is a dubious honour, as you will soon see. The figures are an unwieldy 4 metres tall and the highlight of the festival is when the effigies are burnt, accompanied by a fantastic firework display.

As you can imagine, an enclosed plaza with 2 million spectators and burning paper is a slight fire hazard and 250 firemen are on standby to pour cold water on the event, literally, if it gets out of hand. Where the EU regs stand on this I am not sure. Too busy getting the obliging Brits to consider taking a competence test and buying a licence in order to own a ‘dangerous’ pet pooch, it seems.

For those in Valencia next week, have fun. The main event takes place in the Plaza Ayuntimiento or Main plaza and there are events each day at 2pm leading up to the Grand Finale. The real smart visitors will already have their rooms booked overlooking the square so they can watch from a safe distance.

While you are online, why not browse the many other webcam views of Spain, from beaches to mountains and pick out your next vacation in the sun.

Farm parks are going one step further, and several have live webcams to view the young animals. Leader of the pack, as you might say, is Denbury Farm in Somerset. After dark there is even the opportunity to view badgers, foxes and other nocturnal creatures on the prowl.

The idea has been a great success and families now treat a day at the local farm park on a par with any other theme park or zoo. Along with the animals, farm parks offer tractor-pulled haycart rides, mini JCB’s in the sandpit, nature walks, picnic areas and playgrounds. Some even have campgrounds so families can have a holiday based on the farm.

Feeding time is great fun, as young calves and lambs can be bottlefed, and who can resist that. The live farm webcam on Peter’s farm in the Netherlands has great views of cows and calves in the barn, or search some of the many Lamb cams which pop up at this time of year. For the not-so-squeamish you may even witness the birth of a baby lamb. Aaaah!

Or should that be Baaaaa!

Celebrations include concerts, a welsh food fest and a parade in Cardiff. The Royal Welsh Regiment is changing the guards at Cardiff Castle and visitors each receive a tube of daffodil bulbs as they are the national flower of Wales. A leek is also a national emblem of Wales and to celebrate St David’s Day, the Welsh wear either a leek or a daffodil pinned to the jacket, so visitors definitely get the best deal with the daffs!

Incidentally, Cardiff is a great place to visit on other dates throughout the year, especially the newly opened Cardiff Bay. The former docks have now been transformed into a 500-acre freshwater lake for leisure and watersports. The waterfront is home to many shops, restaurants and attractions including the Techniquest Science Centre and the National Assembly building so there is always plenty going on for all the family. Checkout the latest happenings from the Cardiff Bay webcams.

Note that our newly re-shuffled webcams of Great Britain are neatly categorized and all the sights of Wales from Aberystwyth to Wrexham can now be enjoyed from our dedicated Wales webcams section. Happy browsing!

Hampton Court Palace has many tales of strange sightings and chilling experiences. On one occasion security guards spotted that fire doors were frequently opened and on checking their camera footage saw a figure in period dress stepping through.

BBC Lincolnshire has innovatively put their webcam to a new use. Whilst two of their webcams show live webcam views of their presenters on air, the third has been set up in what appears to be a derelict building. Or is it?

In the old Radion Buildings there have been spine-chilling tales of a pale apparition. The building is reputedly haunted by…..a ghostly ice-cream lady. Perhaps I should tell you that the building was once used as a cinema. If you have the nerve, you can checkout the ghost webcam for yourself. Rather than pay to have the webcam monitored, BBC Lincolnshire is hoping that listeners, or rather viewers, will spot evidence on the webcam and let them know.

A similar ghostcam is set up inside the Willard library in the US state of Indiana. Live webcams are monitoring the library in the children’s room, the basement and the reading room. So far the results are inconclusive, although the still photos are pretty spooky……

Now we just need some webcam submissions for those counties which have zero! Funny – when sorting it out, there’s an inordinate amount of webcams on the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, and other beauty hotspots – though perhaps that is not unexpected. However, don’t let the West Midlands feel boring, or Cheshire for that matter – they’re both sitting empty… go find us some cams and submit them here! Thank you!

A school in Philadelphia issues Apple laptops to its students for work, but little did they know that staff at the school had the ability to spy on the laptop’s user.

It was only when a pupil was reprimanded by the deputy head for doing what looked like ’suspicious behaviour’ that the parents filed a law suit and blew the whole issue wide open. It seems that the student had been watched remotely via the laptop’s webcam, holding up what looked like ‘pills’, but which actually turned out to be a candy bar.

The school came clean to having used the remote watching capability on 42 occasions, but insists it was purely for tracking any missing laptops. The student with the candy begs to differ and the whole thing has turned into a mess.

And so it should be. Who is to say the staff who have access aren’t engaged in redestributing the images or abusing the facility they have to violate the privacy of the user, or worse? The key fact seems to be, that the school never put any of this remote viewing capability in the paperwork supplied with the laptops… so this seems a fairly ‘open and closed’ case from the legal point of view.

Running from the 18-28 February 2010 there’s still plenty of time to grab a cheap flight or ferry ticket and head on over. Launched by silver screen greats Colin Farrell and Kristin Scott Thomas, the festival opens with a European premiere of Neil Jordan’s new film, Ondine, starring the aforementioned heartthrob, Mr Farrell. Further highlights are the screening of KST’s french film, the Irish premiere of Partir, three films featuring Patricia Clarkson and the Closing Gala “I am in Love” attended by actor Tilda Swinton. In all there will be 100 film screenings from over 30 countries. This is a great festival for Dublin, especially in drizzly February, as it is a mostly undercover event.

Incidentally there are three Irish nominations in the 82nd Oscars so fingers crossed for the “Secret of Kells”, “The Door” and “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty”.

If you fancy heading to Dublin at any time for a weekend away, see what’s going on from these live Dublin webcams. The Dublin City Centre streaming webcam includes views of O’Connell Street and the River Liffey whilst the view of O’Shea’s Pub really captures the atmosphere.

Keep it coming – it’s great to see Camscape becoming more and more popular!