Ireland day 1166. Saturday 07 December 2024- Day Off
Commentary
A long-ish Club walk had been scheduled for today, and I was particularly looking forward to it. The last one, in the Slieve Bloom mountains two weeks ago, was cancelled because Storm Bert was paying Ireland a visit at the time. Anyway, fast forward two weeks and only the names had changed. Slieve Bloom had become Wicklow, and Bert had become Darragh. So as I lay in bed while the latest weather intervention hurled around outside last night, I was already beginning to realise that today’s outing was likely to be in jeopardy. As a result, I wasn’t very surprised when the text came through at 7:45 am cancelling it.
A bit of a disappointment, as I was looking forward to some fresh air and exercise. But on the plus side, it gave us a completely free day to play with, which is quite a rarity these days.
We’d been woken quite early by the storm, so there was plenty of time for cups of tea in bed before deciding what to do. In the end – and slightly to my surprise as it’s not normally my favoured way of spending a Saturday – we both realised that we needed to do some Christmas shopping, and that a trip into Dublin was called for.
All public transport in Ireland, it seems, has been disrupted today by the storm, but we still managed to get a train with only a short wait at the station. Our first destination was a quirky little Mexican shop in Camden Street, which was only a short hop on the no 14 bus from Tara Street DART station. We replayed our journey back into town afterwards, and on speculation went to the Chez Max restaurant near the castle to try and get lunch. As luck would have it, a table for two had just become available so we grabbed it while the going was good.
After Max we went in to the uber-expensive Fallon and Byrne food store to get some festive treats – surely the easiest was I know to spend €200 without even noticing it – then on to the Nespresso shop to get some coffee. By the time we had finished, we were both shopped-out so we walked over to Pearse and caught a timely DART back to Malahide.
Now we’re safely in the flat, it’s already time to think about dinner. I managed to get a couple of half price Tesco pop-pop spaghetti bolognaises a week or two ago which I think will do the trick nicely. So they can go in the microwave now to start thawing.
As for the rest of the evening – well, as if we haven’t had enough medical excitement for one week already, we have both come down with colds now. So I think it’s time to crank up the central heating, finish warming the spaghetti, and settle down to some lighthearted entertainment on the TV. Hopefully more normal service in all departments will be resumed tomorrow.
Today’s photos (click to enlarge)
Interactive map
(No map today)