The Dublin Community Blog

THERE is a special deal involving a number of Dublin’s top restaurants and the Irish Times where on particular lunchtimes people can book a two-course meal with a glass of wine for €20. The restaurants included are: China Sichuan, Town Bar & Grill, The Cellar, L’Ecrivain, Chapter One and Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill. To qualify you need to quote the Irish Times offer when booking for the specified dates, and bring a copy of the Times to the meal. You will also be asked to make a contribution to Our Lady’s Hospice.

This offer won’t last long so get booking now, find out more on Cheapeats.ie.

I have been meaning as well to share a slideshow with you of all the recent demonstrations being held in Dublin against the Government’s mean Budget which hit all sorts of vulnerable people, people who for a multitude of reasons have already been struggling. Anyway here it is.

I WAS picking up some late night shopping late last week in St Stephen’s Green shopping centre when I stumbled across their 20th birthday celebrations involving a lazer light show. I can’t believe it is that long since it opened, I remember when it was all new and shiny.

Unfortunately their website doesn’t have any details of the birthday but I managed to grab a few snaps.

Christchurch is an amazing iconic building/s in Dublin. Reaching over a main road, its origin’s date back to an original Viking Church in 1030. Find out all about Christchurch here and explore medieval Dublin at Dublinia here (the pic was taken of the Dublinia side of Christchurch).

Once again St Stephen’s Green is host to an outdoor photographic exhibition this time featuring photographs of Polish wildlife by Artur Tabor. There was a previous outdoor gallery held last year in the park and from what I can gather it was very popular with visitors to the park so it is well worth a visit.  This year’s exhibition was officially opened at the end of last week and will run until September 6th. You can find out more information about the exhibit on the website. Meanwhile here is some of what you can expect.

For the first time ever the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament) is to open its doors for a family day on Sunday, June 29th, from 10am to 6pm.

Among the attractions taking place on the fun day is a tour of Leinster House with visits to both the Dáil and Seanad chambers, a picnic on Leinster Lawn, gourmet food stalls, live music, entertainment, hot air balloon (commemorating the balloon flight that took place in 1785 from Leinster Lawn), great political speeches as performed by members of the Gaiety School of Acting and a series of brief lectures on the history of the parliament.

To find out more and book tickets check out the Family Day website.

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Continuing and combining the theme from the last couple of posts this weekend a group of us are having a photomeet around the Dublin Maritime Festival. There’ll be a market, tall ships and all sorts of wonderful things going on. So if you are interested in photography please grab your camera and come along. We are meeting at 1pm on Sunday, June 1st at the Harbour Master pub, behind Connolly Station in the IFSC. We have a Facebook event page which you can check out and you can also check out the images from our last photomeet on Flickr.  Any and everyone is invited.

I don’t think anyone has posted this already and if they have, many apologies. Restored for some time now following its destruction back in November 2004, the Olympia Theatre canopy looks great. I couldn’t resist snapping it the other night as it is the first time I’ve seen it back in all its glory.

Over the weekend a big gang of photobloggers met up at the George Bernard Shaw pub Toe Jam carboot sale. Its a small venue with a small number of stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful things and certainly one to look out for, I think the next one is planned for July, so if you are a member of Facebook you can join the group (in the above link) and get notified when the next one takes place.

In keeping with the outdoor market theme we then headed to the Temple Bar farmers’ markets for more snaps. Here’s some shots of the day and you can see more of everyone’s in the dedicated Flickr group, go on and get lost in some excellent photography. And if you fancy joining us the next time, keep an eye out as I will post details here.

As written about in the previous post, last night saw Dublin’s participation in Earth Hour. I was at the Customs House to watch the lights  go off and the pics below show before and afterwards. A video of the lights going out is available here.

According to news reports today there was a drop of 50 megawatts nationwide in energy demand last night in comparison with last week. You can read more on Ireland.com, on the Earth Hour blog and the official Earth Hour website.