Bunratty Animals and Playground, Ireland

Bunratty Folk Park features some things that are fun for the children visiting. What's most fun is debatable.

For us parents, the presence of many different animals, both caged and free range, made for a wonderful experience. Many pens are kept throughout the estate. Some of the animals have managed to sneak through the fences.

Trapped chickens

Free-range bird

Hogs!

Deer!

For J and L, the highlight was the playground. A swing set is off camera, but the wooden fort fired their imaginations in a way that not much else in the Park did.

Wooden fort seen from the swings

Inside the fort

One of the fort's guard towers became J and L's shop and bakery, where Mommy could order snacks. Somehow I wound up being a worker there. When I would just stand around, L told me to get to work. So I'd pretend to stir some ingredients. They went off into the maze to buy extra ingredients, which I took advantage of to take a break. Once they returned it was back to work. It wasn't too bad since I was shaded from the sun.

For crazy people, the highlight might be the drying haystacks. Since Ireland is so wet, hay stacks need to be put up from the ground in order to dry more quickly. But who really wants to watch hay drying?

Drying hay