Although I've never been to Bloom before, we both had a day off work today and as the weather is SO glorious, we headed for the Phoenix Park for the 10th year of Bloom; a large outdoor and indoor event organised by Bord Bia with designer gardens, a lot of Irish food produce to sample and/or buy for later use, plants and garden decorations and equipment to buy, live cooking demonstrations, live music, a hammock and bean bag area for resting (yes, really) and a sculpture garden! Phew! I'm probably leaving something out there so if you are interested, you can have a look at their website HERE.
For now though, here's some of our photos from the day:
I haven't shown any photos of the many food stalls, our refreshing drinks etc because they were on my phone which is now not cooperating (bar giving me the one photo of my sweating, below). Gah! However, if you want to see more of our day I'm on Snapchat @ Chloe M (Nursefancypants) and on Instagram @Nursefancypants.
If you are thinking of going, I'd highly recommend it, we really enjoyed it even though neither of us are gardeners! There's a real festival vibe to the day with people chilling out everywhere having a pint (or in my case a Dingle Gin cocktail), kids playing, lots of delicious food being eaten and overall, people just relaxing and having a good time. The garden exhibitions are just that; they're more like installation pieces in an open air gallery. Beautiful to walk through and appreciate.
On the less fun side of things; there's a free shuttle bus going from just over the bridge before Heuston station. It is free but expect queues- expect them coming back too! We had thought about walking but actually it's quite far in to the park so you might be better off just bussing it and saving your legs for walking around in there.
Prepare for the heat- bring sunscreen and a bottle of water and maybe a hat (especially for the young'uns). There's stations about the place with taps of fresh water to refill your bottles with, which is great for this weather.
If you have one, bring one of those freezer bags you get in supermarkets to keep your chilled groceries cold. We bought butter and cheese and the butter had already started to melt, even though we bought it just before leaving, wrapped it well and thought it was protected from the heat.
And just a plain old sturdy shopping bag, in case you do decide to do some shopping.
There are plenty of toilets, but as always, there's the same amount of men's to women's, which makes no damn sense at all.
There were queues for the ladies toilets all day, I never once saw one for men*
Money wise, you could easily end up spending a small fortune, so set a limit and/or decide what you're interested in buying before you go in.
You could also just eat all the samples and bring in your own sandwiches to further save some shekels but for us, getting lunch there was part of the experience. We had a big salad from The Happy Pear and some BBQ tandoori chicken and naan. Very nice. There may have also been a 99**
If you suffer from hay fever, take your antihistamines before you go in and bring them with you too!
It's €20 each for adults, open from June 2nd- June 6th, 9am to 6pm.
Have you been to Bloom? Are you going this year?
To the comments!
XX
*mutters about the patriarchy
**There was of course. It was a bloody heatwave, ice-cream all the way tbh.
*** I wasn't sponsored to write this post- we paid for our tickets in and all our own food and drinks. And it was worth EVERY PENNY! Hic.
No comments:
Post a Comment