Ireland day 1546. Monday 22 December 2025- Dublin Final

Today’s summary	Got up early as Val had a video call and I wanted to get some fuses from the shops to try and mend the kettle (unsuccessfully). Then we caught a late morning train into Dublin to get the final few things for Christmas meals in Marks and Spencer, Grafton Street. In the evening, Val went out with her Museum colleagues for pub dinner and I had a pop-pop meal and wrestled to come to terms with the iOS 26 update on my iPhone
Today’s weather	Mostly dry with occasional sun. Light south easterly wind. Appx 10c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Dublin Xmas Shops Again

Commentary

I have finally begun to appreciate that not only is Christmas expensive, preparing for it also seems to take up quite a lot of time. And as we are going away for a few days over the festive period, we have to take everything with us. And that of course means getting ready in advance.

We were up quite early today as Val had a video call at 9am and I needed to do some shopping. Specifically, I needed to get some fuses to see if I could get the kettle – which inexplicably switched itself permanently off yesterday morning – working again. Anyway needless to say I couldn’t do so even with a new fuse so I’ll have to do a bit more detailed investigation to try and identify the problem.

Once Val had finished her call and I’d finished fiddling around with my fuses, we had a cup of coffee then set out one more time to try and do battle with the Christmas hordes in Dublin.

I thought by now we had more or less all the things we would need for Christmas but a quick inventory check revealed that there were still some key missing ingredients. Like mince pies and crisps, which are of course central to any half decent holiday.

We could have got most of these things in Malahide but we thought we might have a wider selection if we went into Dublin again – though hopefully for the last time before Christmas.

So once again we were down on the station platform, once again we were on the Dart, and once again we were at Pearse station. We decided to keep things simple and just head direct to Marks and Spencer in Grafton Street – because we had the greatest chance of getting everything we needed there, all under one roof.

And that actually proved to be the case. We divided the purchases between us and got them cleared off our list quite quickly. The when we emerged from the shop into the blinding light of day, we were suddenly possessed with a burst of enthusiasm for shopping and as a result we headed straight across the road to Brown Thomas, where Val wanted to buy some new bits and pieces.

Brown Thomas was less successful than Marks and Spencer, unfortunately. It was bedlam in there, with hardly any staff on hand to help bewildered shoppers. You can share our enjoyment of the scene in the banner image at the top of this blog. Anyway we quickly gave up and eventually emerged empty-handed.

From there we had intended to go to the National Gallery for lunch. But given the chaotic scenes, we abandoned that idea. Instead, we just collected sandwiches from Pret, which we ate while waiting on the platform for the train at Pearse station.

Once back in Malahide, we started packing for our trip then had a cup of tea and headed back out again to SuperValu to get the wine (most important) for Christmas. We had deemed it too heavy (and most likely too expensive) to buy in Dublin so elected to get it locally instead.

This evening, Val has gone out to Gibney’s in New Street with her Museum colleagues for their Christmas get together and dinner. I, meanwhile, am going to enjoy a Tesco pop-pop meal I bought a few weeks ago and froze. Then I’m going to update my iPhone to iOS 26. I can see no possible benefit in doing this, but Apple keeps nagging me to do it so I might as well bite the bullet. Then I can spend the rest of the evening fixing all the things which inevitably won’t work properly any more after the update.

Such is the nature of technological progress, unfortunately.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Quantum fields, strings and gravity – and all in Westland Row. Sounds like an interesting diversion from shopping	Serried ranks of everything in Marks and Spencer, Grafton Street

A fascinating-looking textbook on Irish natural history in Hodges & Figgis. I may have to go in (in the new year) and take a look!	Bike rentals have sprung up across Dublin – which is great, but it does mean they all have to be collected up from wherever they were deposited. Here’s the clearing up operation in action



A beautiful sunset over the Casino Model Railway Museum this evening