5/30/10
After Kilmainham Gaol, we took the bus to a stop near Christ Church Cathedral where there’s a Milkshake Bar. Since all of us were partaking in our wonderfully fattening shakes, we decided it would be best to make the half-hour trek back to the hotel. We were walking by St. Stephen’s Green when Gabby decided she wanted to take her picture next to Oscar Wilde. Oscar was an easy find inside the gates of the park, which were lined by dozens and dozens of paintings. We had heard music from the street, so naturally we could hear it better by the Oscar Wilde statue.
A few minutes later, we were inside the heart of the Dublin City Soul Festival. It was coincidental that this was happening while Summer Camp was happening at the same time in Chillicothe. I’m sure Summer Camp didn’t end at 6 p.m., though. I estimate around 1,000 people in the park with most of them lying on the grass. Trees surrounded the festival so that passersby couldn’t see what was happening. I’m not sure if this was intentional, since I didn’t see anybody taking money.
There was a tiny stage near the front, and my guess is that bands didn’t play long. The festival was at a break when we arrived, but by the time the last band got up there, they were only able to play about 20 minutes at the most before the gathering was supposed to end. Nobody seemed to really care about the music toward the back since they didn’t even applaud when the band finished a song.
Throughout the park, machines spewed bubbles as a little boy tried to spray them into his own mouth with a bubble gun he was carrying. No marijuana or psychedelics were spotted on my end, but lots of dogs roamed around and food was everywhere. There were tents for a charcoal grill, coffee, crepes, pizza, beer, mocha beans, and a rainbow-speckled van for ice cream.
We didn’t end up staying long. I wanted to beat the foot traffic out of there.
