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Grafton Street is unabashedly commercial, but it's a pleasant enough place to while away some time - here, as in most cities, shopping is a way of life, and people come here as much to see and be seen as to buy. Dublin's leading department store, Brown Thomas, is a classy location for some retail therapy, while Powerscourt Town House is similarly upmarket and set back a little on Clarendon Street. As well as simply wandering in and out of its retail palaces, you can also take in the street life. Since it's pedestrianization, Grafton Street has become the centre of Dublin's burgeoning street theatre, and this is one of the few places where you'll find buskers. This vibrant street life is celebrated by the bawdy, musical hall representation of the city's most famous fishmonger, Molly Malone, by Jeanne Rynhart. Initially much maligned, not least because of Molly's striking decolletage, the statue has, in recent years, become very much part of Dublin life and is referred to affectionately as "The Tart with the Cart". Unmissable in Grafton Street, even if you have no other business in the area, is Bewley's coffee house (daily 7.30am-7pm). While the cafe has moved somewhat upmarket in recent years and lost much of its former character it is still worth visiting to appreciate its dark wood and marble-tabled interior, lit by the magnificent stained-glass windows of Dublin artist Harry Clarke. Bewley's was once a Dublin institution where a cross-section of the city's population could be found in animated discussion over a cup of Dublin's other famous brew: Bewley's coffee. The coffee, sticky buns and world famous potato soup that made Bewley's a favourite with generations of Dubliners continue to be served here, and on the top floor, a small museum traces the history of this establishment. Additionally, plans are afoot to develop the small theatre space, which is currently used for lunchtime productions. Founded in the 1840s by the Quaker Bewley family, it became a workers' co-operative in 1971 and subsequently almost folded in 1986 provoking a national crisis until the government stepped in and offered to help before a buyer was secured. There are many branches of the chain popping up around the city but the two other traditional branches, each with a slightly different character, are in Westmoreland Street, which has wonderful Art Nouveau fireplaces (daily 7.30am-7pm), and on South Great George's Street, a smaller and more subdued incarnation (Mon-Sat 6.45am-6pm). Close to Grafton Street is the Dublin Civic Museum at 58 South William St (Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 11am-2pm; free), a tiny establishment that is probably strictly for museum and history buffs. The display consists of a garbled but oddly intriguing collection of artefacts relating to the history of the city from Viking times to the present. You can see, among other things, the head of the statue of Lord Nelson that used to stand outside the General Post Office in O'Connell Street and was blown up by the IRA in 1966; one of the original 1916 proclamations of the Republic of Ireland; and fascinating minutiae such as timetables detailing the excruciatingly slow progress of that state-of-the-art mode of transport, the canal-boat, across Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
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