Liliana is a 17-year-old singer-songwriter - and leaving cert student - from Lusk in north county Dublin.
She tells us about her favourite spots to hang out near home, and tells us where to find the best pizzas in the city.
Home is...
I grew up in Swords, but now I'm living in Lusk with my mam and the dog, Oscar – we moved right before the pandemic, at the end of 2019.
I really like it. I get along really well with my neighbours. They're really chatty and so am I, so I think it works out well. And they all like music so they don't complain about me playing the piano at 3am. So it's all good so far.
How I get around the city:
Honestly, Dublin Bus is my one true saviour, I'm sure I use my Leap card 27 times a day. I love it, you can go anywhere you want and it works out good for me because the only place you can really go from Lusk is taking the Dublin Bus.
I'm going to driving lessons right now but I don't have my full licence yet, and I'm kind of scared to drive around Dublin. People are scary on the road!
My favourite restaurant in Dublin:
Pi [on George’s Street] – it's Italian wood-fired pizza, and oh my goodness! Italian food, I'd literally have it 24/7, so that's my favourite place to go.
I think they have a different mozzarella, and from what I heard they import all their ingredients. And they have the wood fire - it's not just your regular oven.
I love to go to Italy on holidays – I have an aunt that lives there – and it's the closest thing I can find to Italian pizza. It's amazing.
My go-to café or coffee shop:
I love Skinny Batch [in Lusk]. They do really good breakfasts. I'm a vegetarian and they've got a really good vegan and vegetarian menu. I love their pancakes.
Where I get my exercise:
There's a gym in Swords that I'm a member of, but I have a little home gym – my treadmill and a couple of weights and resistance bands and stuff in a spare room – so I use that most of the time.
Around my area, there are a lot of cycling tracks. I got a bicycle recently so I've been cycling a lot. And I got an Apple Watch, which I feel has inspired me to work out now. I want to track everything that I do, every step I take!
My favourite shops:
It's a bit of a problem. I need to learn how to save money, but most of my money probably goes to Zara because I feel like they have trendy clothes and it's not crazy expensive.
I think there's one person that keeps on donating clothes [to St Vincent de Paul’s in Rush] that happen to be my size, and just has the best taste ever. Every week there are new things in my size and I'm like, 'I don't know how this is happening but I'm accepting it as a gift from up above'. I'm really appreciative of this person!
My favourite place for a haircut:
I love to get facials and stuff in Therapie clinic – the one that I go to is in Malahide. That's a good place to go whenever I get really stressed out and you can see it in my skin.
I haven't gone to a proper hairdresser in a while – I'm still like a three year old child that gets their mam to cut their hair, but she just knows how to do it right every time.
My favourite place in Dublin to get away from it all:
One of the places near me is the beach at Skerries. I love that place, it's so serene. You can see people out there with their boats, but even just going out there and sitting with a good book, it's such a good place to forget about the world.
During lockdown, I kept on going there because it was one piece of normality that I felt like I could find.
My favourite place to let my hair down:
I don't think I actually know how to party! Between the leaving cert and everything else in my life, I'm not really that big of a party person.
The only time I can really let my hair down is if I do gigs, and then after the gig all my friends and I have a great time and go out for drinks, because then I'm done with the nerves so I can just let loose. But that's pretty much the only clubbing I'll be doing any time soon!
The last live event I went to:
It was the St. Patrick's Festival down in Collins Barracks – FM104 picked me as one of their artists to perform, so I had a little slot there and then watched the other artists as well, like Winnie Ama and Sophie Doyle Ryder.
It was really phenomenal, and it was probably the biggest set-up that I'd performed at. So it was unreal.
Dublin's best kept secret:
Right beside us, there's a primary school and right near it there's a trail that goes down into a big forest of nothing.
I like to go there with like my dog. It's a good place to write because you're kind of away from everything, though the signal isn't too great so it's probably not the best place to get lost!
I think it's good to have little getaways that are close to you.
