Mocha, Chai, Hot Chocolate!

One of our favorite things to do while in another country is to find local restaurants and café’s and enjoy the food, coffee and atmosphere.  This may come as a shock to many of you, but this means that Starbucks is not on our list of must stops.  In fact, if it wasn’t for buying an occasional city mug for friends and getting the opportunity to have a potty break we probably would not even step into a Starbucks.  As it turns out most European cities do not have public bathrooms and in order to use a bathroom at a business you have to purchase something to get a code to get into the bathrooms.  Remember, we do stop often at local businesses to get tasty food or delicious mochas; herein lies the main problem, we tend to stop at the smallest little hole in the walls with the best food and drinks, but of course they do not have bathrooms, sometimes even nowhere to sit.  The great food has always been worth it, put potty breaks are a necessary consequence of eating and drinking.  Therefore purposefully planned souvenir stops at say… a Starbucks!   

In fact, Dublin made those stops quite easy since there are about 12 Starbucks coffee shops in the city.  It’s a little over done in my opinion and the locals agree.  Why would we want to miss the amazing coffee and treats at Bewleys (serving Grafton Street since 1927), or Butlers Chocolate Cafe(although it is a chain), they serve a free chocolate of your choice (I picked Bailey’s Irish Cream, Salted Carmel and others) with every drink purchase.  Even Ry’s hot cocoa was more than decadent, warmed milk with two huge ladles of thick gooey chocolate from a huge pot kept warm all day, and as with every treat in Ireland served with a very healthy amount of fresh whipped cream!  Some honorable mentions for food are the Green Olive on Baggot St. (all food made in store, so delicious, huge portions, and we were given an extra dessert since we were sharing), Avoca (which serves amazing organic food that is sized for Giant’s), Queen of Tarts (which had the best pumpkin pie ever), and of course Davy Byrnes (gourmet Pub) where we enjoyed a piping hot bowl of Irish Stew!