Tall Ships Races

This weekend was the annual "Dublin Tall Ships Races and Festival" here in the city, and Dublin has been preparing itself for the festival all week long.  When I say tall ships...I mean it.  They are all huge pirate ships that have raced across Europe since July to end the race in the River Liffey and celebrate!

This is some info I gathered from the website, though who gets what if/when they win is beyond me.  I never claimed to know everything about this city and it's many festivals.

"The Tall Ships Races 2012, presented by Szczecin and organised by Sail Training International, will commence in St Malo, France from the 5th to the 8th of July.

From St Malo, the fleet will race across the Bay of Biscay to Lisbon in Portugal, before carrying on to Cádiz in Spain.

The Tall Ships will depart Cádiz to cruise in company along the length of the Portuguese coast before reaching the safe harbour of A Coruna in Northern Spain.

At this point excitement will be mounting in Dublin, as the fleet will depart A Coruna on the 13th of August to head north for the Irish Sea and Dublin.

The The Tall Ships Races 2012 – Dublin event will take place from the 23rd to the 26th of August."

We've all been watching the various ships pull into the city's harbor and river this week, and I explored many of the ships on my morning walks.  Drew even got to see the city's many bridges lift and open to accommodate these pups, which was pretty cool.  

Because we were going to Belfast this weekend, I opted to check out the parade and festival on Friday after lunch with my pal.  The parade consisted of the various fleets of the various ships from their various countries.  Each fleet would walk down the quay, representing themselves in different ways - some had full on marching bands with drum lines (!), some just wore costumes like animals, some marched in their full on sailor gear, some danced around in water demon costumes.  It was a real treat.  Countries represented were....UK, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Ecuador, Italy, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland, Norway, Belgium, Russia, and Lithuania.  Damn!  That's a lot of boats and sailors.  It reminded me a bit like Sex and the City's description of Fleet Week: lots of good looking sailors walking around the city in uniform!  Not that I like that sort of thing, of course.  But my single gals would.  (I'll let yall know next year when to come visit!)

Here are some pics I took of all the foreign sailing shenanigans:

Mere-fold dancing awkwardly. 

Water demon!  Ahhhhhh!

Another stilted water demon thingy.

Queen of the Sea.  Or something.

Good looking sailors!

"It's an over-sized hat.  It's funny.  It's funny because it's ah...bigger than uh..you know.  A normal hat."
(Name that quote!)

Bag-piping sailors!

Los mexicanos!

I wanted to run up and start speaking Spanish to them.  But I didn't.  

Ships, ships, and more tall ships!

It was a fun little festival day and I was only sorry we didn't stay in town for the weekend to get to see it all.  But there will be plenty more Dublin festivities to explore!  That rhymed.