Dublin (and Oxegen), 7-12 July 2010

It was summer, and all around us people were going to sold out festivals like Glastonbury, T in the Park, Latitude, and countless others. So we discovered a seemingly lesser-known festival called Oxegen, just out of Dublin. We could kill two birds with one stone and see a bit of Dublin as well, we thought.

We Ryanaired it to Dublin, where we were to have a look around for a couple of days before going to the music festival. We were travelling light, so needed to buy a tent, sleeping bag, and gumboots (it invariably rains at this festival). It was a bit of an ordeal dragging all our stuff to our hotel, so we welcomed a good stout and Irish Stew for dinner. We managed to have a pretty good look round Dublin over the next couple of days, including Temple Bar which is the touristy part of town and has the Wall of Fame, with all the Irish musicians that have made it big (and there's a few).

The River Liffey separates North and South Dublin.

In Temple Bar they had street theatre on for summer. This guy took us on a comedy tour of Temple Bar with some hilarious little acts on the side. There are also a lot of typical Irish bars in Temple Bar with live music, really aimed at the tourists. We didn't stick around though.

The next day we did a free walking tour and got the distinct impression the tour-guide didn't like to ruin a good story with the truth. He was very entertaining but I didn't want to take much of what he said as history. It was cool when he showed us the bullet holes in the post office though.

We went to the Guinness Factory, and learnt how to pour a Guinness the right way.

Then we got to drink the results.

We managed to catch another comedy act (also part of the summer festival, despite the rain...) called Cirque de Legume. We were in hysterics. The whole act is just these two and vegetables, and it is much funnier than you would expect something like that to be....

On Friday it was Oxegen day! We lined up, and lined up, and lined up for the bus (but on the plus side got free stuff while we were waiting). When we finally got there we were a bit disheartened at the fact our campsite was already full, so we had to go to the one furtherest away. It was actually fine though and turned out to be closer to the music than we thought.

This is the line-up:

It was extremely difficult to decide which stage to be at at which time! We tried to make a wee schedule up. In the end we saw: A bit of Plan B, Empire of the Sun, Vampire Weekend, Stereophonics, Jay-Z and Fat Boy Slim.

On Saturday we saw some of the Drums and Hurts, Ellie Goulding, La Roux, Bombay Bicycle Club, Biffy Clyro, Florence and the Machine, Kasabian, The Black Eyed Peas and Ash. There was a lot of running back and forth, and agonising over whether to see Muse or not - which we had tickets for next month.

It was wet... Florence took her shoes off and danced, and the smile never left her face despite getting soaked. She was one of our faves.
It was also muddy. Drunk people plus mud can be pretty damn funny.

Drowned rats!

The fashion of the weekend was patterned wellies and leggings for the girls.

Sunday it stopped raining, thank goodness. We debated whether to go on one of the fair rides, but decided we might get puked on by someone drunk. We saw Kate Nash, Diana Vickers, Earth, Wind and Fire, Newton Faulkner (one of the highlights!), the Temper Trap, 30 Seconds to Mars (below), Paolo Nutini, Eminem and the last of the Prodigy.

We got the bus back on the Sunday night so left before Mumford and Sons which we were a bit bummed out about, but we're sure we will get another chance to see them. We ended up getting into our hostel at about 2 in the morning, and the shower was probably the best ever (needless to say we relied on baby-wipe baths during the festival, mmm).

The next day we were able to have a bit more of a look around, and soak up the sun which had decided to put in an appearance now that the festival was over...

Next time we go to Ireland we will have to look at the country outside of Dublin.