One of the most wonderful impressions from Ireland reality for us was Dublin parks. Being used to congestion and lack of green in Russian cities we were simply amazed by the scope of park industry and golf courses in Dublin.
Just out of interest, I took a map of Dublin and tried to count them. From the very first pages, I counted a score and perceived the futility of my attempt. I even did not take into account public gardens and lawns which are almost everywhere. It is unbelievable that all this is situated in a small island country having limited space with suitable growing conditions. I can just imagine how much money the Dublin City Council is spending for caring for all this stuff if only mowing should be done at least once a week!
We are going to try to share with you our impressions about the most remarkable parks. We will start our story from the largest closed park in Europe, Phoenix Park. It was laid out in the middle of the 17th century and occupies space of 700 ha. The most wonderful thing, which simply knocked us over, were large wild deer herds living freely almost in the center of Dublin. As it turned out, they appeared there from the very beginning.
To our great embarrassment, we learnt about their presence not at once, but only after a while since our first visit of the park. The deer are not afraid of humans and allow approaching to them rather close. Nevertheless, you can see them only in dry weather when they do not hide themselves from rain down in the park.
Other points of interest, which we would like to note, are Residence of the President of Ireland and of the USA Ambassador. Beside this, almost from every part of the park there are seen The Wellington Monument and a huge Papal Cross at the opening of which the Pop John Paul Second took part and celebrated the divine service. The event took place in 1979 before a vast assembly.
But the main curiosity of the Phoenix Park is Dublin Zoo.
We shall gladly tell about it in our next stories.
The area of the park and availability of different sport and football fields allow to held sport and entertainment events. Almost every week there take place some interesting local events, for example, large kites contest. You can watch the photo report in our pictures.
