I had set aside this weekend for a clean up of my place which looks like some mythical beast had ground down a ton of Saharan sand and huffed and puffed until it covered every surface. No, not sloth on my part – I had some minor work done, very minor, which has generated an inordinate amount of dust. However Friday came and went and the work wasn’t completed; Monday is now the new finishing date. It seemed pointless to do a massive round of cleaning only to have to do it all again forty-eight hours later, so this weekend was instead dedicated to doing as little as possible.
Tag Archives: Dublin
Snapshots of my Weekend
Tall Ships Festival
I am smitten by the sea and I especially love the way the ever-changing seascape reflects the annual onward inexorably march of the seasons. I also like looking at boats bobbing in the bay and if I am passing Dublin port enjoy spotting the cargo ships and cruise liners docked there. It was therefore a racing certainty that I would go to look at the tall ships which arrived in Dublin recently for the Tall Ships Festival (August 23 to August 26th).
Snapshots of my Saturday
I often, thought not invariably, work on Saturdays. However, today was a work-free Saturday so I decided to go into town, town is as I mentioned before, is what the denizens of Dublin call their metropolis despite the fact that it’s a city.
Filed under Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés, Shops/Shopping
Walking: Killiney Hill
Because, these past few months, I have eaten a surfeit of sugary treats aka slices of cake and put regular exercise on the back burner the land of healthy living seemed as distant as the far reaches of the solar system. It was time for a change, so this week I munched my way through gargantuan quantities of fruit & vegetables. And I walked, walked and walked some more. As I live beside the sea, my neighbourhood is a pleasant place to stroll around but if I was to pound the same route continuously I could very easily get bored. Variety is after all the spice of life so it was time for a change of scenery.
Favourite Shops//Smock
Smock is a rather special independent boutique on Dublin’s Drury Street that is co-owend and run by friends Karen Crawford and Susan O’Connell. They came to retailing from different backgrounds; the creative Susan is a graduate of the Grafton Academy (fashion college) and the no less creative Karen had a corporate career before she teamed up with Karen to open Smock.
Filed under Dublin, Shops/Shopping, Style
Coffee in Dublin//Seven: Clement & Pekoe
When I am in town, I am constantly on the trail of the holy grail of caffeine – a decent cup of coffee. Town incidentally is Dublin, which is actually a city but for some reason native Dubliners, myself included, often use the noun town when talking about it – as in ‘going into town’, ‘working in town’, and ‘shopping in town’. Anyway that semantic digression aside the good news is that there is an excellent newish café/shop called Clement & Pekoe serving equally excellent coffee (and teas) at 50 William Street South in the centre of Dublin.
Irish Writers’ Centre
A couple of Saturdays ago when I was in Parnell Square visiting the Dublin City Gallery I popped into the Irish Writers’ Centre, which is a few buildings down from the gallery, to pick up a leaflet giving details of their creative writing classes. Such was the pull of the place that there and then I signed on the dotted line for membership.
A Day in Dublin
I have been thinking wistfully these past few weeks that it has been some time since I last visited Paris. The thing I most love to do when I go to the City of Light is simply to wander around at a leisurely pace stopping as the mood takes me to: look at pretty courtyards, admire magnificent historic buildings, visit a museum or to lunch at a favourite café. So I decided this Saturday to do a version of my Parisian wandering in my native Dublin.
Lost Weekend
Every time I visit Lost Weekend, a design store on the main street of the south Dublin suburb of Blackrock, my curiosity is piqued by the enigmatic name. When I was heading to Lost Weekend on Saturday I had in mind that I must find out why it is so called. As it happens I clean forgot to ask the question. So with poetic licence I have decided that it might just be because it is the sort of space that one could all too happily be totally lost in for a whole weekend.
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Filed under Designers, Dublin, Shops/Shopping
Coffee in Dublin//Six: Urbun
Urbun is a café in the heart of Cabinteely Village in South County Dublin. The name is a play on words; the owners Katie and Niamh choose it because their inaugural project together was making cakes to sell at a market stall and because when they opened the café they wanted to bring an urban vibe to suburban Cabinteely. Katie and Niamh both have food related backgrounds; in a previous life Katie was the food editor of Totally Dublin and Ballymaloe trained Niamh cut her foodie teeth working in the London café scene.
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 