Happy Thanksgiving

“Happy Thanksgiving!!”  I’ve never heard that said to me so many times from my Irish co-workers.  They are very much aware of this American holiday and want to know all about the traditions associated with the holiday – be it what we eat, who works on the holiday and day after, what does Black Friday mean, etc.  All day long while I worked (yes I worked a normal day) I had these questions.  Interesting fact is that Ireland now has their “Black Friday”.  It is basically every Friday and they have special sales….yep every Friday.  Ireland took our Black Friday and made it even worse with it being every Friday between now and Christmas.  Sorry Ireland!!!

On Thursday morning, we woke to hear that the “Haunting Soldier” sculpture in St. Stephen’s Green Park that we has visited on Monday at had been vandalized with red paint.  The 6m-tall sculpture has been on loan from its British creators to mark the centenary of the ending of the World War I, in which an estimated 300,000 Irish served and 49,000 died. The sculpture was designed to evoke the fragility and suffering of those who survived the war and who returned home to an uncertain and difficult future.

For their last day, we decided to return to the park to see the sculpture again, do some more exploring, and buy souvenirs.  The statue had been cleaned but a large crowd was gathered at the statue.

Grafton Street is dedicated to shopping – from end shops, boutiques and Irish goods (Brown Thomas or the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre) to a more bazaar atmosphere (George’s Street Arcade). In 2008, Grafton Street was the fifth most expensive shopping street in the world

We ate dinner in the Temple Bar area.  There are excellent pubs and bars all over Dublin, but only in Temple Bar will you be able to literally step out of one pub and straight into the next one without as much as hitting the pavement in between. Temple Bar pubs are always busy and you are almost guaranteed to never have a dull moment.  Music is in the air all over Temple Bar, from traditional Irish folk to the latest bands and DJs.

Chuck and Michelle ordered fajitas, Alex had a small pizza and Rachel had a roasted chicken….Happy Thanksgiving!!  After dinner, we went on an Irish musical pub crawl.