Ireland day 1445. Friday 12 September 2025- Planning

Today’s summary	Spent the morning doing some shopping in Malahide and making some plans for future travel. In the afternoon we went into Dublin where I failed to get the book I wanted, but Val successfully bought some wool. In the evening we had Sicilian pasta with roasted tomatoes and aubergines for dinner accompanied by a glass of vermouth and an hour of TV
Today’s weather	Feeling quite autumnal. Cool, windy and sporadic heavy downpours of rain. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 14c

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

Commentary

Now that the summer seems to be drawing to a close, we have been starting to think about how to spend the autumn months. We’ve got some travel in Ireland planned for next month, and also some interesting outings arranged for next week. So we are pretty busy already but we couldn’t resist the temptation to try and slot in something else as well. We eventually came up with a plan for a gap we have the week after next and spent the morning sorting out something to fill it. More in that closer to the time.

Once we had finished dealing with that, we had a cup of coffee and some porridge than dropped into Malahide to do some shopping. Afterwards, Val started cooking tonight’s dinner which is Sicilian pasta with roasted tomatoes and aubergines. It is part of our new plan to eat more Mediterranean-style food, given its many apparent health benefits. I’ll tell you if it’s worked when I am 108.

Once she’d finished and I’d done the washing up, we got our things together and raced over to the station, where we were just in time to catch a Dublin-bound diesel. We were quickly transported to Pearse station where we jumped off and headed along Nassau street in the general direction of Grafton Street.

I stopped off at Dawson Street to go to Hodges and Figgis bookshop. I wanted to get a map and a travel guide – but they didn’t have what I wanted so I left empty-handed. Val went on to a wool shop in the Powerscourt centre and was more successful in her quest and came out with just what she was looking for.

Afterwards we treated ourselves to a glass of wine and something to eat in Bewleys, before returning to Malahide from Pearse.

We had dinner more or less straight away and I have to say our dose of the Mediterranean was perfect. I feel ten years younger already. We finished off yesterday’s red wine, which was the perfect complement to the pasta.

To round off the evening, I did the tidying up while Val put her feet up and had a well deserved rest after her culinary endeavours. Later on, we watched a bit of tv before finally closing down the day and retiring to bed.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


St Teresa’s Carmelite church – tucked away in a side alley alongside Brown Thomas	Essential afternoon refreshment!

Beautiful flower-seller stall at the end of Duke Street, where it meets Grafton Street	Dinner! Aubergine and tomato pasta. Very Sicilian



Beautiful ammonite in cross section in our fossiliferous table at Bewley’s café