Halloween prep and shopping

Yesterday I went into the City Centre of Dublin because I wanted to do more sightseeing. I feel like I have unfairly avoided doing Dublin touristy things, and I can never seem to get myself to just go. Well, yesterday wasn't much different, but I did end up having a great time. My first stop off the bus was to Henry Street, off of O'Connell, which is sort of the central street of the downtown area. Henry Street, which I discovered last week in an attempt to find a fabric store, is a huge shopping area! There are great stores packed in there, and it's fun just to walk down and see everything going on. I made another stop at the fabric store, and browsed other shops for fun. (Back story on the fabric store: my lovely mother sent me a Rapunzel doll in the mail with some dresses to practice my costume design because I've wanted to get better at that for a while.) So I ended up buying little stuff so I can make a Halloween witch costume for Rapunzel.

On the mindset of Halloween, I then went Halloween food shopping, over near Grafton Street, which is the main street on the other side of the river Liffey. I have been planning out sweets that I can try to make and fun Halloween treats for me and my roommates, who now think I'm the new Martha Stewart and keep calling me "the best roommate EVER!" I had so much fun checking out all the Halloween displays everywhere- Ireland is as crazy as we are in the States! Over at Grafton Street, I also picked up a few other things I needed, like more Christmas card supplies, and ingredients to make dinner.

But the best part of my shopping adventure yesterday was the unexpected of a fresh market near Grafton Street! I've been up and down there probably 50 times already, but this was, I think, either the first Saturday I've been there or just the first time I noticed it. The side street was filled with stalls of fresh fruits and veggies at ridiculously low prices, like 8 pears for 2 Euros, or a whole bag of potatoes for 1 Euro. I didn't buy a whole lot because I didn't know how much fridge space I had at home, but the next Saturday I'm in town, I am absolutely going there and stocking up on fruits! There were even little store and stalls that sold Asian and Spanish and Polish produce and other foods. Apparently there's quite a Polish population in Dublin, I've run into countless all-Polish supermarkets and delis.

With my heavy bags in tow, I headed back to the bus because it had already been a few hours and it was raining almost the whole time. As I turn onto the street with the buses, one of the paper bags I was carrying broke open, and all my stuff fell out onto the sidewalk. A true testament to the kindness of the Irish people, the woman working in the store I was in front of when the spill happened, immediately rushed out with a plastic bag to give me, and helped me pick up all the things that dropped. She didn't say anything or stay long, but I was so touched that she not only noticed what had happened, but came to help so willingly. It was very sweet!

After that, I had a great night with one of my American roommates who didn't go to Scotland with the other two because she had a friend staying who left early Friday morning. I made some of the Halloween treats I'd been dying to try out, and she kept me company and helped and kept telling me she felt like our kitchen was the Food Network. We had a lot of laughs succeeding, or failing, in making things edible or cute. Everything turned out really well, though! We both ended up not exactly eating dinner, but we did make decorated biscuit cookies, peanut-butter balls, and the cutest Halloween graveyard puddings.

So, in short, even though I yet again did not do one main Dublin attraction, I had a blast in the city for the day!