Katie-Ann M.
Yelp
Karen Millen, Monsoon, Office, the country's flagship Tommy Hillfiger store, Boots, River Island, celebrated American diner Capitan America's whose walls are awash with memorabilia from visiting Irish and international stars such as Westlife, Colin Farrell and David Bowie and was the location of U2's first few band meetings, AIB Bank, Marks and Spencers - the nationwide favourite and the homely and conventional nature of which appeals to the archetypal Irish housewife, Burger King, Ireland's answer to Selfridges the prestigious Brown Thomas, famed coffee house Bewleys where Hilary Clinton enjoyed a FairTrade coffee during her recent visit to the Republic, as well as the more commuter and convenience friendly Londis, The Loft Café and The Bagel Factory - Ireland's most well-known boulevard 'Grafton Street' is awash with famous franchises and public services a plenty to cater for visitors old and new. Before you even step foot inside the Boots located on this famed street you are rather enamored by the old fashioned timber exterior. The elegant oak that borders the door and windows create a unique and more tasteful exterior that works to emphasize this Boots' more exclusive location. This is one small factor that works to underline this street's overall clout. In recent times Office's flagship store on Grafton Street has retained a very distinct, imaginative as well as sophisticated edge. The shoes on sale are very contemporaneous and hip making the Grafton Street branch a very pulsing, stirring place to dwell - much more so than any other branch I have visited across the country. In general the street possesses a thrilling aura that is doubly intensified (in a good way) by the regular street performers, bands, mime artists, buskers and choirs that frequent the street and fill it with charming and stirring sounds that provide an exciting soundtrack to walk down the street to - it really plants a suitable spring in your step.
The street gratifies the archetypical modern commuter, transitory tourists and those passing through. For example Londis is a convenience store that sells a whole conglomerate of necessities and therefore exists to provide those pernickety goods you find you need all of a sudden when you're on the move. Yet the street also steps up to the plate when it comes to indulging the cosmopolitan, affluent shopper in the form of Brown Thomas, BT2 ('Brown Thomas 2' that sells only idiosyncratic garments for the younger, hipper crowd but still for the same expensive prices seen in the original BT across the road) and Karen Millen who pay Dublin City Council €1,000,000 rent per annum for the shop space they occupy. It is this versatility on the part of the street that makes it work so well.
At Christmas fantastic dazzling lights align the street from top to bottom. Like Oxford Street in London the switching-on of the lights is always an exciting annual event as the crowds wait in anticipation to see which celebrity shall be turning them on. The lights add a really enchanting ambience to the street like no other experienced at any other time of the year. Grafton Street's a wonder, it really is.