The place to be was at the finish. As the riders approached O'Connell Bridge the banging started, thousands of hands beating encouragingly against the sponsors' boards. The noise didn't stop until all 189 Tour de France riders were safely over the line.
At the finish they take their cycling very seriously. There were agonised wails from the Germans when Jan Ullrich came in five seconds behind Chris Boardman in the prologue.
Three Englishmen, on the other hand were "over the moon".
Watching the delighted Manchester rider don the resulting jerseys was close to the bizarre. There was Chris on stage with his hands up acknowledging his win. "Wooh!" went the crowd. "Wooh!"
Then he disappeared behind a screen, emerging again a few seconds later with two attractive young women dressed in yellow. This was the presentation of the yellow jersey. "Well done Chris, well done."
Then he was gone. But wait. He comes out from behind the screen again and does a kind of "You thought I'd finished didn't you?" dance. There are two women dressed in green. They are here to present Mr Boardman with the green jersey.
So many sponsors, so little time.
It was the same all over the city on Saturday. If it wasn't giant FIAT logos painted on the road, it was Coke, or Minute Maid or Credit Lyonnais. The advertising wasn't even for our benefit. As with almost everything else, the 390 million TV viewers were what the Tour organisers had in mind.
The Tour de France may be en Irlande but that is a geographic fact that has little or no bearing on how the three days of the event are run.
In Dublin Castle, the Tour HQ, it was almost impossible to find any officials who spoke English. One journalist rushed in to a press conference only to find it was being held exclusively in French.
In the tented village in Trinity College where Gardner Merchant had laid out an incredible spread, some of the stands were manned by the French. Asking for some cheese in English meant being totally ignored. Near O'Connell Street there was a hot dog stand staffed by two women neither of whom could speak English. Granted, the standard of hot-dog was much superior to our usual tepid frankfurter-in-tasteless-bun-type fare, but the price list said £3. As if a pound were a franc. Hmm.
All during the day there were loudspeaker announcements in French, with no English translation. Most of the people selling programmes from the back of vans (£5 with free baseball cap) couldn't speak English. Nor could some of the people selling souvenirs from the Tour de France boutiques - pen £6, titanium watch £340.
What would the French think if we brought, God help them, the Rose of Tralee to France and neglected to include any bilingual organisers as part of the event?
It wouldn't happen. It takes an innate arrogance to transport an entire event to a country and pay scant attention to the language of the place to which you are travelling. The French did. Do we mind?