The Diary of a Slow Traveller

I have fond memories of spending a delightful afternoon thumbing through CDs at one of the Tower Record stores in San Fransisco back in the 90s while my jet lagged family were asleep. I’d also spent time in the HMV store in Singapore and London, thumbing through the racks of CDs.

I particularly remember the Singapore store as I’d spent a whole afternoon there in preference to seeing Singapore’s sights. When I caught up with my colleagues they were somewhat bemused by how I’d spent my afternoon. But in 2017 these were all distant memories.

So what has this got to do with our trip to the UK. Well, it has been one of my laments that the joy of thumbing through racks of CDs is a thing of the past,  so it was with absolute joy that I spent a delightful hour at Tower Records in Dublin.

We’d booked a tour in The Little Museum of Dublin  for early afternoon, as the morning tours were booked out and so we thought we’d visit Trinity College to see the Book of Kells in the interim. When we arrived to purchase our tickets for The Book of Kells we found that it was on timed entry and that our slot was just before our scheduled Little Museum of Dublin tour. As a result we had an hour or so to kill.

As we’d walked to Trinity College to purchase our tickets, I’d seen the Tower Records store which was conveniently located directly opposite a large bookstore where my favourite person would be happy to browse. I left her there and headed straight across the road to Tower Records.

I suspect as I walked in, my eyes were the size of saucers. It’s enormous and not only did it have racks of CDs to thumb through but racks and racks of Vinyl. My morning was made as I browsed new releases and then walked upstairs where there was even more Vinyl. It was like stepping back in time and I was loving it. Continue reading →