Yesterday we spent a wonderful afternoon in the cute and deliciously unpronounceable town of Dun Laoghaire (Dun Leery). Every Sunday they have a farmers market in the park, so we decided to check that out, and also happened upon a couple other fun things too!

When we got off the DART, we went looking for the farmers market and immediately passed by a Thomas the train full of beautiful flowers. Isaac hopped right on and pretended to drive! After a few minutes of that, we continued in the direction of the park where the market is held and passed through a cute sort of boardwalk area with cafés and also a cool nautical themed playground. Of course Isaac wanted to play there right away but we (Jeff and I) were pretty hungry and eager to get to the market to grab some lunch. We promised Isaac we’d come back after lunch to play, so off we went to the market.

It was awesome and packed with people! There were some stands with fresh produce (I’m guessing there’s even more in the summer), lots of bakery stands, and also vendors with different crafts and books. Then there were a ton of different food trucks, everything from falafel to Spanish food to sushi to wood fired pizza. We browsed around and then decided to get some Spanish food and some pizza, and then also a fresh smoothie and some focaccia for Isaac. Since he’s not the most adventurous eater and likes pretty plain foods, Isaac has basically been subsisting on smoothies and bread for lunches…luckily we are finding those are both pretty easy to come by (for some reason everywhere here seems to have smoothies)! We brought our food over to a big grassy area in the park where everyone was gathered to picnic and relax. There was also another playground at the park, but Isaac decided he wanted to go back to the first one we’d seen.

So after lunch, we headed back toward the playground, passing the east pier on our way. Dun Laoghaire’s main feature is its pier (there are actually two…the west and east piers that make sort of a u shape out from the sea wall). Tons of sailboats and kayaks are there, and there’s also a passenger/car ferry that heads over to the UK…I’m curious how long it takes and what it’s like! Lots of people walk all the way out along the piers. We didn’t do that this time, but maybe on another visit.

We did stumble upon a cool event though at the pier. The lifeboats and coast guard were having an “open day” where kids (and grownups) could all come see, learn about, and hop on various rescue vehicles. If you’ve ever seen the cartoon Fireman Sam (which is one of Isaac’s favorites), this experience felt like it was right
out of that show, so Isaac loved it! They did a simulated water rescue where they lifted someone out of the water onto the lifeboat with a special pulley. We got to see a huge coast guard helicopter and then Isaac got to “drive” the mountain rescue vehicle. It might be hard to appreciate how cool this all was, but for an almost 4 year old boy obsessed with firefighters/rescue vehicles, this was pretty much as good as it gets!

We wound up our day in Dun Laoghaire with a visit to Starbucks. We have mostly been trying lots of local cafés for coffee, but this was near the pier and it was fun to get a little taste of “home” 🙂 Another post i will write about cafés and coffee here, but for now I’ll sign off!