TEDDY BEAR TRAIN - REVIEW AND VIDEO
Rathwood Train – Teddy Bear Picnic
It’s been a bit of a crazy couple of months so when my husband told me that he had planned a surprise family day out I was extremely excited. The idea of him planning something for the three of us is so sweet. To be fair to the man though he did plan our entire wedding.
The location was Rathwood and I was chuffed about this. It’s one of those places that I have wanted to visit for so long. I had heard really good things and from what I could gather little man seemed to be the perfect age for it. I actually always thought that their only event was the Santa Train. An experience that seems to sell out months in advance of Christmas every single year. This is only one of their “trains” though. They do an array of really sweet themed trains and we found ourselves at the Teddy Bear Picnic one last week.
Like, seriously, “we’re going to a Teddy Bear Picnic”. Is that not a winning Saturday plan? I just can’t cope with the cuteness of the name even. Hubby did good. He actually got the tickets on pigsback.com for a seriously reduced price (€13 I think) so definitely keep an eye out for those.
Rathwood’s location is Co. Carlow. It took us just over an hour to drive there and the drive itself was actually very pleasant. It’s nice to escape Dublin even just for a couple of hours to see something a bit different. Little man is guaranteed to fall asleep in the car these days so it’s pretty easy to plan these trips around a car-nap and that’s exactly what we did.
When we arrived at Rathwood I was surprised that there was so much to see. It’s a massive retail unit which I hadn’t expected. I really enjoyed pottering around the homeware section looking at beautiful bits and bobs. It reminded me of Avoca. They also had an impressive Children’s section with clothes, toys, books and gift ideas. We made our way to the back of the store and checked-in for our train. We were given name-tags (I was “Adult”) and shown to a little waiting room which is a lovely green room with some pretty backgrounds for photographs. Before we knew it Goldy Locks herself came in to meet us and show us outside. I won’t give the experience away but I will say that there were a couple of different elements. We got to craft, enjoy a train ride and eat. There were a couple of surprises and little man enjoyed every single one of them. The entire experience was about 45 minutes long and it was actually ideal for my son’s age group.
After the experience we had lunch in the restaurant and really enjoyed it. We then finished the day at the brilliant playground which is directly beside the restaurant.
