I must apologise for my long absence. Between catching up on college assignments, doing housework, trying to maintain a social life and the fact my laptop is broken, it hasn't been easy to sit down and do some blogging.
Recently my mum, my boyfriend and I headed to Dublin Vegfest. After accidentally directing Laurence to the RDS instead of Griffith College (where Vegfest was being held), it was time to queue to get in.
After about 10 minutes queueing, we were told if we had a ticket we didn't have to queue. I had to wonder why there wasn't someone announcing this at the gate to save unnecessary queues but alas.
When we reached the ticket scanning bit, one of the stewards told us to keep moving forward, despite the fact we were told to stop to have our tickets scanned. We told the girl scanning our tickets that mum would be joining us later with her own ticket and she suggested we wait for her. After explaining she wouldn't be there for another 3 hours or so we were let in.
After we finally found the room, more queues ensued, and we were told we'd have to wait about half an hour to get in but we could go to the 'chill out area' to wait. Laurence and I travelled about an hour and a half to get there and my mum travelled about 3 hours and really we just wanted to get a look at the food! Thankfully we weren't waiting too much longer and it was time to feast our eyes (and mouths) upon some of the delicious offerings.
Loads of different brands and food companies were at the event, and we were spoiled to choice with tasty nibbles including dairy free milk and cheese, Cornucopia (a lovely veggie restaurant in Dublin), chocolate, veggie marshmallows, veggie burgers and nachos, salads, cakes, pies and more. I tried veggie marshmallows from Marsher's Mallows, delicious chocolate from Chocolatey Clare, hemp juice from Kama Hemp (give them a follow on Twitter here as they're trying to get more followers!) and vegan cheese from Violife - my absolute favourite dairy free cheese brand. There was also talk of vegan Baileys being sold but I saw no sign of it.
To bring home, I got some chocolate, vegan cheese and yoghurt, savoury pies and from the Moodley Manor stall Laurence and I got a burger and nachos for lunch. There wasn't much seating considering the sheer volume of people so we had to nab a seat as soon as some other people got up. It was nice to sit outside and chill after being shoved around the event room!
We were done within a few hours as it was extremely claustrophobic. On the way out I saw people with goodie bags and later learned some people got them but had to ask about them. However before I booked my ticket I'd asked if goodie bag tickets were available and was told the event organisers had heard nothing about them, so some people got goodie bags and others didn't, which was a bit unfair. I also saw lots of people getting turned away as the venue had reached maximum capacity. It is excellent to see such a demand for an event like this but maybe a bigger venue would be better next year. Apart from that, I did enjoy the day and got some really nice things there - it's so nice to have your lunch and not have to ask what the ingredients are!
I also have to say fair play to Dublin Vegfest who very kindly offered to post out my glasses as I managed to drop them at the event and didn't realise I'd lost them until I got all the way home, so kudos to them and well done for such a jam packed event.
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