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When the parade was finished, I wandered down to the Irish Festival that was being held in Bubier Park. As I did, I had the opportunity to take some candid photos along Las Olas. One set of photographs I took was to create a panoramic view of the parade route from the place where I had been standing. The view below, created from four separate photos, begins looking west, pans around across the north, and ends up looking east. I have put this photograph in the scrollable window below:

My vantage point had been in the intersection of Las Olas and Third Avenue, and so the park would be a couple of blocks west of me. I headed down that way. There were lots of people wearing lots of green at the parade, of course. During the parade, many of the units were tossing candy and other trinkets to the crowd, and some of them were tossing strings of green beads and other green items as well. I myself went home wearing one strand of green beads.

Other folks looked as if they'd made an effort to augment what they'd left the house wearing with as much green stuff as they could gather up, and this group of folks was no exception. I suspect that the bars and pubs in Fort Lauderdale will see a few of these people later on, and they'll probably still be wearing their green souvenirs.

Here are two more pictures that I took from my vantage point before I headed down to the park:

Heading down to the park, I could see that there was quite a crowd. When I got to the northeast corner of the park, I walked between a couple of the vendor stalls and out into the middle of the park where I could get a look at what was going on.

Bubier Park has been here as long as I can remember. It is located just east and just below Andrews Avenue, which ascends to the Andews Avenue Bridge just west of the park. I might point out that the Briny Irish Pub, where Fred and I go frequently for supper or lunch is just to the west of Andrews Avenue and right on the New River.

I had always thought the park was named for Wayne Huizenga, the founder of Blockbuster Video and of Waste Management. Years ago, he was also the owner of the Miami Dolphins football team.

There is a large fountain at the north end of the park, at the intersection of Las Olas and Andrews Avenue, where we have stopped frequently whenever we walked to the Briny Pub or to the movie theatre that used to be in the Riverfront Center. The fountain has colored lights that play on it at night (in sequence with the colored uplights that illuminate the trees that surround the main circle walk in the park). You used to be able to control the fountain in some respects by putting your flat palm over various sensors around the perimeter of the fountain, but I don't think that feature works anymore.

Anyway, the entire park was filled with people and vendors for the Irish Festival. The circular walk was lined with food stalls and other vendors. The central lawn had a large tent on its south side with picnic tables underneath for people to eat the goodies they purchased, and the rest of the lawn was open with a few more vendor stalls sprinkled through it. There was a small orchestra in the bandshell at the south side of the park near the river and there were folks sitting and lying on the grass listening.

In the first picture I took, at left, you are looking directly towards the New River (south) and you can see the bandshell where the small orchestra is set up, and the long tent that is providing a shady area for people to sit and eat the food they've gotten from the various vendors.

Over on the far side of the central lawn, there was a kind of petting zoo set up. One woman had some ponies that kids could ride in a circle, and in another area, a man, dressed, inexplicably, in a kilt, had baby alligators kids could handle along with some tortoises that were roaming around. (Sadly, as you can see, the alligator's mouths were taped shut.) Here are some of the photos from the petting zoo:

I thought the tortoises were interesting, as they were moving so fast around their enclosure, so I made a very short movie of them (the first few seconds of which were a little fuzzy until the camera caught up with their motion). And then I walked down towards the orchestra.

Watch the Tortoises in Motion (Mouseover Image Above for Player Controls)

Looking Towards the New River

I got down in front of the bandshell, which you can see here with the River House condominium towering over it. Once I got situated and not in anyone's way, a made a short movie of part of the performance of what turned out to be the American Legion Symphonic Band and also took a picture of the crowd having a listen:

The American Legion Symphonic Band Performing (Mouseover Image Above for Player Controls)

Looking Out Across the Crowd at the Festival

That brought my visit to the Irish Festival to an end, and I went over to the River Walk to head back to the condo and rejoin Fred.

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