Stop me right now if you’ve heard this before, but, hand to god(s), we had another major, major year here on the blog, shattering records all over the place. I mean, are you ready for these percentages? I don’t know if you are. I think you’re gonna have to convince me. “Uhh, how the heck am I gonna do that?” you ask, staring blankly at your phone/tablet/laptop screen as you read these words. Well, it’s simple, Fred: all you have to do is read the following quotation about the subject that’s brought us all here, that lovely, glorious, worldview-expanding, cranium-opening, beautiful, wondrous, amorphous, multi-adjective-inducing thing — travel!
Read MoreLondon had been a trip, as had Galway and Cork and Cobh before it. But we were back in Dublin, where we began (and then ended and began again), and it was finally time to give the Irish capital a proper spin. Thus, on a wickedly windy Saturday morning, we stepped out of the Ashling Hotel and onto Benburb Street, ready to take on the city.
Read MoreYou might think the experience would lose a little of its luster the second time around, at least at the margins, but waking up in perhaps the most famous city in the world for a second consecutive day was no less thrilling. The only bugaboo this time is that we didn’t have a full day in London ahead of us. It would be but a mere few hours before we needed to return to London Stansted Airport and head back to Ireland for the very final leg of our whirlwind European adventure, meaning there was no time to spare.
Read MoreIt was only recently, as in within the last couple years, that I learned just how Irish I am. That sounds odd perhaps, but I’ve lived most of my life believing I was mostly Polish. That may still be true, but according to data from MyHeritage, my maternal grandmother was 94.1% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, which no doubt means some of that Irish blood runs through me, as well. Armed with this information, I set out for my newly-realized ancestral homeland in late March 2024, looking to connect with my Irish heritage and maybe drink a Guinness or two.
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