Sunny city skyline

A very rare thing happened today. I didn't go to the Music Group session. Instead, I met Carl mid morning and we spent the day shopping. It was raining when I woke, but it cleared up quickly, the sun broke through, the clouds vanished, and we ended up with a perfect winter's day. I parked the car on the roof of the car park and took this shot of part of the Dublin skyline. The large lumpy building is the Central Bank of Ireland (a highly controversial structure in its day), and rising into the sky to the right of the clock tower is The Spire.

Most of our shopping for presents was done, so the grand retail-therapy plan was to concentrate on ourselves for a change. Carl did better than I did in that department, both in the city centre and out in Dundrum Town Centre where we spent several hours, Carl spent a fortune, we wore our feet out and richly deserved the cocktails we slurped before getting the Luas tram back to the city centre. After packing the car boot to overflowing with our purchases and paying the almost thirty euro it cost to the leave the car in the car park for the length of time we did, we went on to meet Niall, the most regular host of our Grand Prix lunch get-togethers for an exchange of presents.

When we finally got to Carl's place we treated ourselves to a nice bit of supper and a couple more well-earned drinks at the end of a tiring but enjoyable day.