Friday, December 2, 2011

The National Craft and Design Fair

As I said on Wednesdaty, my wife and I went out to the National Craft and Design Fair in the RDS. I thought I'd share some pictures from our day out to start the Christmas season.


This fair is on every year and really does have some great selections from Irish businesses. There's very little in the way of chains present, and if you look around you'll find things to suit most budgets.


It's great seeing the place decked out with Christmas lights. People were also generally polite and helpful. Great Christmassy atmosphere.


This stall was selling a new type of syrup they've invented, made from apples. It's like a kind of apple honey, called Highbank Orchard Syrup. We tasted some and just had to buy a couple of bottles.


There was a craft section dominating the center of the main hall, with people working a pottery display right there at a stall.


Almost everything you see there is some form of biscuit. Yum.


This is another stall that drew us in. Banshee Legend is a new whiskey-based liquer with a hint of ginger. Very nice, and I'm not normally a whiskey drinker. We picked up a bottle, but it's also available in the Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street in Dublin.


A close-up of Banshee Legend. I love the design of the bottles.


Lots of the stalls have some really great and unique gift ideas for kids as well as adults.


Everything here is hand made and beautifully glazed. Unlike a lot of the pottery on sale at the fair, this stall had some really reasonable prices, too.

If any of you ever get the chance, I can only recommend going to the fair. Tickets are €10 and if you get a return pass before leaving, you can come back any day during the fair for no charge. It's a great way to get into the swing of things for Christmas, though it can be tiring to walk around all the stalls, so small children are likely to get bored easily.