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20th December 2016
12:10am GMT
For the past 7 years getting a taxi was as simple as just putting your hand out and watching 6 cars battle for your fare. I actually had to wait 3 minutes for a taxi the other day! Lets just hope we don't go back to the days where you had to pay 50 Euros just to bribe somebody to take you home on a Saturday night.
Walk into any of the pubs around Grafton Street and you'll hear the big fat yanks talking about the magical par they got at the K Club or 6 French people saying what a load of "merde" the food here is.
Builder vans, frustrating waits as the rain descends and the M50 being packed again after 6 years of pretty OK traffic are all sure signs we are improving economically.
There is more chance of booking a restaurant at the weekend in Dublin than winning the Euro millions. All the best places are now booked weeks in advance and full of pretty young things eating lobster eggs benedict.
People have given up the past time of window shopping that has been so popular for the last 6 years and instead of just heading to town for a coffee they are piling into the shops throwing heaps of cash on the plastic again.
We've profiled a couple of shit holes in Dublin that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. This one at 850 possibly being the worst. We don't want to go back to a property boom but loads of homeowners slowly getting out of negative equity has to be a good thing.
I know a bunch of people who were forced to leave to London, America and Australia to find work. Most were single when they left but are now aiming to return to Ireland to raise their kids in the country they love.
It might be a fraction of where we were before things went pear shaped in 2007 but there is no dount that we are starting to build stuff again. The traffic down on Dawson Street as the Luas finally gets it's connection or the 10-20 cranes you can see on the Dublin skyline are all good things.
When the shit hits the fan on your personal finances one of the first things to get cut are the personal holidays. We had to put up with "staycations" for the last few years but lets be honest and say that a bit of skiing or a trip to Miami is what we all really dream of!
Along with the housing market the one thing that got hit hard was new car sales. You'd struggle to see many 2008-2013 cars on the road but people are seriously starting to splash the cash on cars again.
