This came about because I was bummed seeing all of my friends and family post their kids photos with the Easter Bunny and I wouldn't have the chance to get the kids pics done. Jeff sent me a link to this event and said "well, it isn't quite the Easter bunny," but I was sold.
http://www.shannonheritage.com/Attractions/BunrattyCastleandFolkPark/
The castle and park are a huge tourist destination (more on that later) and an Easter event. Yay! I went ahead and pre-purchased cheaper tickets and we were set. On Thursday, they were predicting a 70% chance of rain. By Friday it was up to 80% and by Saturday, they were saying 100%. I woke Monday morning in a funk. It had started raining Sunday night and hadn't stopped. At all. It rained all morning Monday. I vacillated between going and staying. We talked through different ways we could still go, but I finally made the call to skip it. I was severely disappointed. I hadn't even realized how much I was looking forward to the trip.
Then the kids woke from a nice, long nap about an hour after we'd planned to leave. Jeff looked at me and declared that we should throw the double and single stroller in the back of the car and just go. If it was too rainy, we'd turn around and come home. So after running around like crazy to get what we needed, we left over 90 minutes later than planned.
It couldn't have worked out better! We arrived just as a bunch of people were leaving and found parking right up front. We also came during a gorgeous, sunny break in the weather. And we had a blast!
First we drove past Limerick, where Jeff works, and under the Shannon river.
We arrived, checked in, and were greeted by the Easter bunny. Adele was initially fascinated, but soon turned shy. The boys didn't know what to think.
We headed straight for the castle.
The sign talks about the castle's history.
We were only able to get into the ground floor -- for some reason they didn't have elevators or stroller-wide doorways back then. Next time we go, we'll be sure to go with other people, so we can tradeoff staying with the kids while the adults go into the castle or pop into some of the buildings of the folk park.
The folk park was where the celebrations were taking place. The park itself is a collection of buildings and grounds re-creating 19th century life. I would've loved to look in more detail, but this trip was about drinking it all in. The kids loved seeing all the animals. In addition to the chickens and roosters, we saw deer, a very friendly donkey, pigs, geese, and baby goats.
As part of the celebration, they had characters roaming the grounds -- Mickey Mouse, Barney, Cinderella to name a few.
They also had a bounce house which Gordon wanted on quite badly, but there were too many big kids and too steep a drop-off for him. The kids loved this man on stilts who did tricks with fire and fire-eating.
At one point we were headed towards the 'back' of the park when it started to really rain. Luckily, we'd just entered this area under the trees, so we were protected. By the time we turned around and headed back, the rain had stopped.
I took these photos at different ends of the main part of the village, to give a feel for what things felt like.
The way up:
The way down:
This is just before we left. I stopped in the restroom and come back to this. Kids every which way. LOL!
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