Costa Coffee in Ireland???

Wandering around Dublin city centre on a cold, wet, windy Saturday morning is not really my idea of fun. Especially when accompanied with three under-5 children, one of whom had had a high temperature the night before. Still, a bit of fresh air and exercise never killed anyone. Probably.

However, my morning was brightened up when I noticed a Costa Coffee store on a busy corner of Dawson Street just up the road from my favourite toy shop - all 50 sq. meters of it (if that) packed form floor to ceiling with classy toys! So while the kids were peering in through the toy shop window I headed into Costa for some coffee and the low-down on their arrival in Dublin.

Costa Coffee have been brewing up a pretty decent cup in the UK for years, and as a chain store over there would have been the biggest rivals to Starbucks - with probably a couple of hundred more outlets than the mermaid. What I have always liked about Costa is their support of Fairtrade long before it started becoming trendy and certainly long before their biggest rival did. That and they do a nice selection of pastries.

I return from my recon trip with a vanilla latte for my wife and a regular latte for me, plus a chocolate mini yule log. (I can't believe I bought something so Christmasy already...but I guess we were in the process of helping out Santa).

"Get this," said I to herself. "Costa have been in Ireland for ages and I never knew it! And they have 27 cafés across the country!!"

"Let me stop you right there," says she, nipping in the bud any thoughts of an another pilgrimage....