There was a walk I used to do after certain tours.
Not every tour. Only the ones where the group asked good questions, or laughed at the right bits, or didn’t spend the whole time staring at their phones like they were waiting for the internet to save them.
Those tours deserved a quiet ending.
So once everyone wandered off toward Temple Bar or a souvenir shop selling €18 tea towels, I’d head off on my own.
Same route most days.
Start near Trinity College, drift across College Green, then wander down Grafton Street without really looking at the shops.
The street slopes slightly downhill from St Stephen’s Green toward the river, though you only notice that if you’ve walked it a thousand times the way I have.
Tourists see a shopping street.
Locals see something else.
You hear the music first.
Buskers have been part of Grafton Street for decades. Some of them ended up famous, which sounds unlikely until you remember that half of Dublin’s musicians started by standing on a pavement with a guitar case open.
But most of them don’t become famous.
They just become part of the street.
There’s always a violin somewhere.
Someone doing a quiet acoustic version of something depressing.
A lad with a microphone who believes he is one chorus away from international stardom.
And occasionally someone who is actually very good.
The trick is not stopping.
If you stop, the crowd forms behind you and suddenly twenty strangers are also pretending to be interested in a man singing Coldplay with unusual enthusiasm.
So you keep walking.
Past the expensive shops where nobody from Dublin actually buys anything.
Past the café windows where people are paying nine euro for coffee and pretending that’s normal behaviour.
And then you reach St Stephen’s Green, where the noise drops away slightly.
That was usually where the tour ended for me, mentally at least.
Five minutes on a bench. Maybe ten.
Watch the buses roll past. Listen to the street fade out behind you.
For years I thought that walk was just habit.
But the other day, doing it again after that last tour I mentioned earlier, something odd happened.
I realised I might not do it again.
Not properly.
Because my brother keeps mentioning Valencia like it’s a perfectly normal place to move to when you’ve spent twenty years explaining Dublin to Americans.
He talks about sunlight.
About streets where people sit outside all year.
About bars where nobody orders Guinness because the beer is cold enough already.
And the annoying thing is… it sounds quite good.
Which is a dangerous thought.
Because once you start imagining a different city, the one you’re standing in begins to feel slightly temporary.
Walking down Grafton Street the other day, it felt different.
Same buskers.
Same crowds.
Same fellow dressed as a statue who jumps when tourists get too close.
But instead of thinking I’ll be back here tomorrow, I caught myself thinking something else.
I wonder how long before the next time.
Which is a strange thought to have about a street you’ve walked a few thousand times.
But that’s what happens when your brother keeps talking about Spain.
You start noticing the small things you’d normally ignore.
And Dublin, which used to feel permanent, suddenly feels like somewhere you might be saying goodbye to.
