Driving in Northern Ireland has introduced a peculiar Irish sense of humour. In addition to very narrow winding roads, we noted that the authorities have completely done away with speed limit signs both in towns and on the open roads- in their place are a copious number of signs warning of the presence of speed cameras (don't tell me what the limit is but take a photo if I exceed it?). Even the parking requires local knowledge and copying others doesn't w...

"There are only two kinds of people in the world, the Irish and those who wish they were."I was starting to get very comfortable with Spud (so named because, in just the right light, our sewing machine on wheels looks like a large peeled Irish potato), so it was time to get out on some of the winding coastal roads that surround the Emerald Isle. Rental cars in Ireland are often times returned with missing mirrors and scrapped up side panels, and it was easy to se...

With DH going through a significant amount of exhausting emotional and physical turmoil, I thought we needed to temporarily shut down our traveling in order to repair and regenerate however, she-who-must-be-obeyed decided that the best healing solution would be to reconnect with the trip we had recently abandoned. So within a couple of weeks we had flown from Barcelona to Nanaimo B.C., and then jumped on multiple planes to make our return to Europe (Dublin, Irela...

When you mention "The Rock" to any North American and you will normally conjure up images of Alcatraz Prison- do the same thing in Europe and I suspect that the immediate image is that of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory that was ceded to Britain "in perpetuity" by Spain in 1713 and although Spain continues to try and regain the land, the overtures have been soundly rejected in two recent referendums (and unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Brit...

We had originally planned on bringing in the New Year in Prague but then we found out that Easy Jet offered a $50 direct plane ride to Edinburgh Scotland. Why was this significant? Edinburgh is consistently ranked as one of the top places to be in the world when bringing in the New Year. The blindingly obvious thing we overlooked was the notion that we were no longer twenty-somethings who enthusiastically strive for an alcohol induced coma crowded together with ...