Every year we spend November in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. After four years we think the re-christening to Co. Cat Country is not just due but in fact, overdue.

It was fab to arrive on the 28th, bleary with jetlag and the tiniest bit hungover (truly - didn’t touch a drop on the flight up to Dublin - it was the Auckland lounge and the 18 hours up to Doha that did the trick). Surfaced on the 29th... and made it to 10.30 am before going back to bed - nothing like a 13 hour time difference to inflict grievous bodily harm on one’s circadian rhythms. All the cats said ‘hey! you guys!’ then continued on their merry way - safe in the knowledge of feeding, love and attention for the month of November. The weather was cold and dry (for a short while), cold and wet (for quite a while), not as cold but still wet (for most of the month), then 100% fine with blue skies and sunshine on the day we flew to Brussels. Though, in fairness, it was cloudy and raining by the time we arrived at the airport. We were certainly not bothered for the first week - we were essentially automatons stumbling around the house and relying on muscle memory to avoid harm to ourselves and others.

The jetlag was much improved after a week so we beavered into Dublin for a day out and the doing of grown up things - essentially a checkup and several vaccinations to keep our full set up to date. It’s an expensive hobby maintaining a full set of vaccination steaknives, however, we visualise a fabulous anti-disease force field around us at all times and figure it’s worth it. The funny old thing with vaccinations is that if one is exposed to something dire, it’s not as though the forcefield flashes and lets us know. We could have avoided Hepatitis B multiple times in India or Japanese Encephalitis as we travelled along the Mekong in early 2019. No one knows. A traveller recently returned to Australia after a short holiday in Bali and was struck down by Japanese Encephalitis presumably from a mozzie bite in Bali - where it’s rare (though not as rare as it is on the Sunshine Coast). We smile when even the GP said she’d never given a Typhoid shot before in her central Dublin practice because they’re not a ‘Travel Clinic’ (and she has never been vaccinated either...) The global village that is Dublin has had 23 reported cases of Typhoid this year - doesn’t take much to be exposed and those are just the reported cases. Anyway - if there’s a shot for it, we have it - we’d have to victim-shame ourselves (further) to death otherwise if we got seriously sick and it was entirely preventable. So all the health business aired out the bank account quite well indeed. Then we did it again the following week for the next batch. Ahhh.... we remember fondly the days when Dublin wasn’t our northern hemisphere medical stop off point.

Aside from kicking the tyres and getting our Warrants of Fitness sorted, we relaxed as much as we could. We didn’t do any new exploration as we were saving our pennies for the long weekend at the Christmas markets in Brussels and the forthcoming 9 week stay in Paris. We enjoyed long drives to our favourite haunts - Glendalough (pictured), the Wicklow Way and the Sally Gap. We visited a couple of local Christmas markets and car boot sales and picked up a few bargains. We took long walks in the rain around the lakes at Glendalough to get ourselves ready for long walks in the rain around Paris. We marvelled that groceries seem to be getting cheaper in Ireland, thanks in large part to our favourite little German deli - Aldi - but perhaps that’s because prices were simply 80% less than New Zealand and the quality is superb. We watched far too much Netflix (Season 3 of the Crown amongst other things). We also did loads of Paris based research and just can’t wait to put it all to good use.

We were in Ireland for 4 and a half weeks and it flew by - we blame the disappearance of the first week on the fug of jetlag... but can’t figure out where the other 3.5 weeks went. We definitely remember the scenery, the food, the early roast turkey dinner and the November evening when it snowed for a few hours. Otherwise... we’re already looking forward to our 2020 visit. Right now, Brussels & Paris - here we come!