I went to an Irish Festival

No, I'm not Irish -- I'm American.

At the festival I met an honest-to-goodness Irish lady, straight off the boat from the Emerald Isle. When I told her I wasn't Irish, she immediately asked where I was from. "Florida," I replied. No, where's you're family from? "Illinois." At some point, I said I was just a plain ol' American Mutt.

She sighed, "What's your last name?"

"[Insert Real Last Name Here]"

 "Oh, so you're not Irish." Nope. Not even a little. But that doesn't mean I don't like cultural events, especially when they're free.  Yes, I said, Free. A friend of mine volunteered at the festival and they gave her a couple of free tickets for friends and family which she gave to me.

The Colorado Irish Festival is a small local event focused more around Irish-style music than anything else. There were bands and booze, some food but mostly burgers, dogs and cheesesteaks. Killians Irish Red was one of the festival's sponsors and was obviously served, as well as a handful of other Colorado-based beers.There were a handful of spirits as well, but since I wasn't in the mood to drink, I didn't pay any attention to the options at all.

There were tons of vendors there as well, selling their Irish, Scottish and otherwise Celtic wares from sterling silver jewelry to kilts and swords. At least there were no pirates or Teutonic vendors there like the Renaissance Festival which seems to be nothing more than an excuse to dress in pre-industrial or steampunk costumes.

We arrived at the fest and had to park as far away as humanly possible then take the shuttle from the parking lot to the fest's entrance. We walked around, checking out stalls, comparing one vendor's widgets to the next vendor's identical widgets for a lower/higher price. My friend actually bought some jewelry and I bought a little US Army hanging thing that catches the lights and scatters it across the walls.

My friend and I ate fried potato ribbons, I had a soda while my friend had a couple of beers and enjoyed the music. The festival is small and there wasn't much to do if you weren't spending $6 per drink or an Irish-style music fanatic.

To be honest, I haven't been to this particular festival in a couple of years since I'm usually bored in the first couple of hours. However, I was able to curb the normal $15 entrance fee, so leaving wasn't making me feel guilty about not getting my money's worth.

The good part about going to the festival, any festival, on Sunday is the vendors usually drop their prices or are more willing to negotiate with you since they don't want to carry inventory home with them.

The good news was, I did get to see the hipster Howard Wolowitz: