Ireland day 0991. Saturday 15 June 2024- Vals Birthday

Today’s summary	Spent the day celebrating Val’s birthday. Took the DART and Luas into Dublin to watch the film “Ama Gloria” at the Lighthouse Cinema, then went for French lunch at Chez Max. Did some shopping in the Powerscourt centre afterwards then chatted to friends and watched Netflix in the evening
Today’s weather	Bright and breezy. Mostly dry after overnight rain. Light westerly breeze. Appx 14c

Today’s overview location (The red mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

It was Val’s birthday today so we started off the day’s celebrations with a lie in and cup of tea in bed. Once we had surfaced we headed down to the station to catch the DART to start off our day in Dublin.

Our first destination today was the Lighthouse cinema (the second lighthouse we’ve visited in as many days – neither of which were actual lighthouses). It’s situated in Smithfield and it screens non-mainstream films. We’d never been before and it was very much on our “to-do” list.

It’s quite a nice cinema – modern and well laid out, but a bit lacking in character compared to the Irish Film Institute. We watched “Àma Gloria”, a newly released and highly acclaimed French film (with subtitles). It was an interesting and occasionally teary examination of the relationship between a young child and her Cape Verdian nanny. Somewhat similar in tone to “An Cailín Ciúin”but perhaps not quite as good.

After the film, we walked across town to the next instalment of our French experience – lunch at Chez Max, a bistro next to the Castle. We had excellent steak and fries, made all the more enjoyable by a surprise bottle of champagne bought for us by our family and sent to the restaurant! Fantastic.

After lunch, we ambled through the shops in the Powerscourt Centre and in the Grafton Street area, bought a couple of houseplants, and then jumped on a passing DART to Malahide at Pearse station.

We spent the evening catching up with friends on a couple of video calls and then watching a documentary about the Tour de France on Netflix – rounding off our francophone day quite nicely.

Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Val!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Critics’ choice for today. An interesting story – though with rather a lot of crying	At the Lighthouse Cinema – very nice, and with a good selection of non-mainstream films. I still think I prefer the IFI

Heading down to Screen 4	The late lamented Fegan’s 1924 café. In a sorry state now

Chez Max – there are only one or two French restaurants in Dublin and we like this one best	It also has an outside dining area but this being Dublin rather than Honolulu, we elected to stay indoors

Val was treated by the restaurant to a surprise “slider” of Macarons for her birthday. (A nice touch and very tasty)