Ireland 2014 - ICanGarden.com

It is a most wonderful feeling when a tour ‘comes off’ as planned. You can always expect or anticipate a few challenges along the way but when those don’t even happen, you wonder what’s going to happen. So it was with this tour. All worked according to plan, even the weather cooperated. Who would have thought that the whole time we were there we would get a few sprinkles and that was all. My group was wonderful and enjoyed themselves so much and also enjoyed getting to meet the others in the group. I think many friendships were made. This tour was a bit weird because we had our Welcome Dinner the second night and not the first. It was because we also attended WAFA 2014 a major huge floral design show and the first night or our tour was their gala dinner. Didn’t want to have anyone missing our Welcome Dinner as I had 5 judges in training for floral design so we moved it to the second night.

June 20th was my arrival day so after checking in I took a walk around taking photos of the area that our hotel was in…a city of colourful inviting doors it seems…and plants!

June 21st was our tour arrival day and everyone either came in this day or earlier. On this day I went as press to the show to get a first hand look at what they would be seeing…spectacular is the only word to describe this. Set up well with lots of space between the rows, it covered 3 areas really and then some more with spin off rooms for the seminars. After this I walked downtown, again not that far from the show and Dublin is easy to get around on foot. St. Stephens Green is a lovely park to walk through and on this day was full of families and couples. Then Grafton Street…full of shops and outdoor sellers and people eating ice cream! On a side street there is a church called St. Teresa’s – inside has the most beautiful stained glass windows and altar.

I met with one of my tour guests over at the Westin Dublin to celebrate my Birthday with Afternoon Tea. It was so good. My ‘Most Peculiar Tea’, as it was called consisted of a teapot filled with Victorian Mojito – gin, mint, lime and freshly pressed churned apple juice. Nice start to the tea for sure…other nibbles that were delicious and different like confit of pork, prawn cocktail, spiced roast beef, oak smoked Irish salmon and more, banana and walnut bread with cinnamon and honey butter instead of scones and the sweets were lovely and unique including things like popcorn panna cotta with toffee popcorn crumble and chocolate and caramel sea salt brownie…oh yes it was delicious and filling and incredibly well priced and 26 euros per person. We decided that for the deserts we just had to have our cup of tea though…. Since it was my birthday I treated myself to a Pandora charm of clovers. Once we got back to the hotel, we checked out the ballroom as that was where WAFA was holding their banquet. I loved the harps.
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