Ground Floor: The man and I decided to do the retail experience last weekend. Since moving into the home office I don't wander the city streets at lunchtime any more and I feel as though I've taken my finger off the pulse of the Irish shopping adventure.

Given that it seems all we're good for these days, I thought I should indulge again. Also (and this shows you how exciting my life has become) I've been trying to buy 160 cm fitted sheets for the past 2 years and haven't been able to find them anywhere.

So we made the trip out to Dundrum Town Centre (which, of course, is not actually the town centre at all but just the much vaunted shopping centre) on the basis that this was where the retail pulse now existed and it should be able to fulfil all our shopping needs.

We did it by public transport, choosing bus and Luas to get us there.

At the Luas station we had the option of buying an integrated bus and Luas ticket but the bus driver could only sell us a single bus ticket.

I know the integrated ticket thing is supposed to happen soon but why can the Luas do it already and not the bus? Part of the experience as far as the Luas is concerned, of course, is in trying to identify the accent of the woman who tells you what the next station is.

Bad enough in English, her Irish accent is like nothing that was ever beaten into me in school. And nothing like what's currently being taught to our children if the hysterics of the teenagers following her pronunciation of Ranallach was anything to go by.

According to Don Nugent, the centre director, Dundrum Town Centre offers a "holistic experience to enrich, indulge and inspire every aspect of our lives". That's asking rather a lot from a shopping centre (or, as it's spelled at Balally station "center" - good old Uncle Sam, your influence is all-pervading!), but I suppose all you can do in the pursuit of the retail experience is aim high.

After the bus and Luas trip, the man and I were falling apart with hunger and so we checked out the eating emporia.

Unfortunately - because there are plenty of food outlets - we chose the one where they were making sandwiches to order and the time from queuing to receiving was 25 minutes.

The sandwich, when it eventually arrived, looked like it had been flung together in a great rush, as indeed it had been. Not very inspiring but at least we'd fuelled up for the experience ahead.

The thing is, of course, no matter how architecturally innovative or intriguingly designed, a shopping centre is still a shopping centre. I liked the layout, but the man found it irritating.

His ideal design is one where you can move clockwise or anti-clockwise around a core and therefore hit every shop in a logical way. I don't really do logic when I'm shopping and I suppose that's the difference between us. I flit. He approaches it with military precision.

He also has much greater staying power, which is unusual in the male of the species.

I was whinging for a holistic somewhere to sit down long before he'd succumbed to retail overload, but I'm not sure you're allowed to sit down unless you've queued 25 minutes for the sandwich.

The centre is a microcosm of global shopping because as well as our home-grown stores there's representation from the UK, Spain, France and soon - from the land of the supersize portion - there'll be the usual suspects bringing the aroma of freedom fries to the masses.

My current favourite store is H&M from Sweden which has the distinction of making Zara seem expensive - how is it that for a supposedly high cost country the Swedes have managed to develop the two lowest cost retailers in the world in H&M and Ikea?

I can't help feeling a little sad that the global experience no longer means going somewhere else on the globe. But the tills were certainly ringing which confirms that the Irish economy is continuing its love-affair with consumerism.

Of course, being a shopkeeper's daughter, I love retail myself but I'm not sure if I'm really inspired by it in all its current indulgent glory - how many different 70s retro flowery skirts can there actually be in one shopping centre? In the end we didn't really buy that much.

The 160 cm fitted sheets were as elusive at Dundrum as they've been everywhere else in the city and so we backtracked to St Stephen's Green, called into a few more shops in a somewhat haphazard and very uninspired way (I bought shoes though - somehow I always end up buying shoes) and then completed our global experience by nipping in to Salamander in Andrew Street for a bottle of red wine and some almost authentic tapas.

The 123 (without a doubt one of the best bus services in Ireland) back to Marino got us within striking distance of home and then we collapsed in front of the telly.

And, you know, what with using public transport all day, the coloured beads and flowered skirts in the shops and the killer shop-dummies in the latest reincarnation of Dr Who, it was just like being 17 all over again. Very holistic after all!