10 Questions About…

This weekend is the Bank Holiday weekend in Ireland. Luckily we made the most of Friday because it rained the rest of the long weekend. But Saturday was beautiful.

We started by going to the Bloom Festival in Phoenix Park. It’s a collection of flowers, landscaping stuff and Irish food. The best part of course was the food. We got free samples of everything – from chocolate covered marshmallows to soup. It was a little bit like a mini State Fair. There were a ton of people.

After Bloom we went to the Maritime Festival on the other side of the city center. Luckily I had scored us free LUAS (metro-train) tickets for the weekend. SO we only had to walk about 30 minutes to get to the LUAS and then hope on to get to the docklands.

The Maritime Festival is much larger – happening on both side of the quays. So it didn’t seem as crowded. We walked by tons of booths. We tried brats and mini-donuts and Chinese food and the girls had ice cream. We went on board the Jeanne Johnson Famine Boat (aka coffin ship). It is a replica (or maybe refurbished original) boat just like the boat folks would have taken to America during the famine. You could see how cramped and terrible it must have been. It almost made flying seem more bearable.

There was a very cool looking naval ship – but I was the only one interested in waiting in the long queue to tour it. We took a side tour around the Grand Canal Docks, which is an area that’s been built up over the last couple of years. It’s a nice area that I hope will thrive despite the recession.

From the Gradn Canal Dock we hiked up to get the bus in Ballsbridge. I mention that only for the few folks who would be impressed with the length of that walk.

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