Urban Hikes for Man & Beast

Weekends at our house are about relaxing the humans and exhausting the canines.  We've discovered that a good way to achieve both aims is the Urban Hike, a long walk combining cityscape, greenery and takeaway coffee.  The first in the series kicks off with couture vintage and ends with falafel.  What can I say?  The Bitches have exacting taste in fashion and street food.

Begin at Lulu Vintage on Monkstown Crescent, well worth a visit, or an ogle if 
you've left your wallet at home.  I don't actually make it inside the store on this 
trip -- dogs aren't so welcome around Chanel, even if it is secondhand...

...but window shopping here feeds my fantasy of a life where I have reason to cycle (with a basket) around Paris in a flounced, turquoise skirt.

Selling the dream: one cleverly designed shopfront at a time.

We knock out a quick visit to Avoca Salt across the road for coffee (they also sell pomegranates here -- a produce extravagance at 1.90 EUR per fruit, but they remind me of what summer tastes like) and make our way to Salthill Beach. Relatively deserted for the hour and weather, save a few hardy souls gathered at the martello tower for their daily swim.  Respect, you crazy bastards.  RESPECT.

Foraging intently for razor clams.

My favorite game in Dun Laoghaire harbor is to review all the crap things people name their boats -- Calypso, Cathy-Ann (who?!), Sea Dancer -- and come up with alternatives. This week's entries include Crunkshop, K-Middy (or P-Middy if your boat has a particularly nice stern) and -- obviously -- The Black Pearl.

Per below, The Bitches' favorite game is to walk carelessly along the pier's knife-edge and I spend much of the time screeching their names, heart-in-mouth, while physically leaning my body in whatever direction is AWAY from the water.  Is not particularly effective as a deterrent or compelling force, but they've yet to fall the 30 feet to watery depths below -- touch wood -- so perhaps my physical osmosis is working?

Of particular interest to them on this visit is the plump, contented pigeon roosting, tantalizingly, in a nook some three feet down the pier wall.  Fortunately, even live pigeon can't compete with the lure of leftover bacon I just so happen to have in my pocket -- the dog owner's ace-in-the-hole.  (As DSPCA dog trainer extraordinaire, Alex Petrelli, taught us, "you wouldn't go to work if you weren't being paid.  Think of [insert bacon, cheese, sausage] as your dog's salary for good behavior.")

 

And for the non-bacon eaters among us, a final stop in Dun Laoghaire market for Dublin's best falafel deliciousness.  There are two stalls, always packed and always divine -- my discerning-palate strategy is to go for whichever has the shortest line.

Mmmmmmmm, falafel...

And they napped happily on the sofa for the remainder of the afternoon (ever after.)