Dublin wasn’t on my list of places to visit. If I’m honest, it wasn’t even on my radar. There are so many places in the world I want to see, and even more that I want to see again and again and again. The art and the architecture and the literature draws me to them. Ireland offers all of those things, of course, but not my favourite version of any of them… which is why it always sat somewhere in the middle of my list of countries to visit “someday,” never really moving.
But there’s a time for everything. And in January, we found ourselves with vacation time to use, nowhere specific we wanted to go and an email about inexpensive flights to Dublin in our inboxes. It seemed a bit like kismet, so we bought tickets. Ian did most of the planning for this trip; I just went along. When I really want to see a place, when I approach a holiday with a preconceived notion of all the possibilities it offer, I have a tendency to excitedly plan every minute of it and, at times, put pressure on the universe to make it turn out a certain way. The result, at times, isn’t particularly relaxed, which our visit to Dublin ultimately turned out to be.
…so I guess it isn’t the end of the world to not plan every minute of my life? I’m not sure I’m entirely sold on that idea, but I’m open to further experimentation.
We still went to museums, dawdled in front of paintings and, of course, visited the Long Room – there will be more on that incredibly, book-filled space at a later date. We also did a number of things that I would never have put on a travel itinerary, including a whiskey distillery tour (complete with a tasting at the end) and visits to two separate archeological museums. I still very much know what I like, but what I will acknowledge is that it doesn’t hurt to get out of your comfort zone once in a while – and yes, it is absolutely possible to have a travel comfort zone, I am living proof of that. (I can define my perfect holiday in three sentences. And I plan every holiday I take accordingly.)
Since I wasn’t in charge of anything, our time in Dublin felt particularly effortless. It didn’t hurt, though, that it’s on the smaller side, as European capitals go. Or that it’s a capital in an English-speaking country. It felt, at once, like I was away from home and like I hadn’t really gone that far afield. (The fact that the flight only took about six hours from Toronto reinforced that feeling considerably. As international journeys from Canada go, it’s remarkably quick and easy to get to Dublin.) It was, in many ways, the perfect place for a brief city break.
I never hesitate to hop on a plane to Europe, no matter how short the trip. But some of those impulsive journeys can be truly exhausting, which this wasn’t. Honestly, in Dublin, I barely felt jetlag, which confused me almost as much as real jet lag does, but disrupted my sleep a lot less. Five days was enough time to see and do all we wanted without rushing from place to place. We ate nothing but wonderful meals. We also got caught in the rain dozens of times, and blown all over by gale force winds. And we laughed about it, it was part of the fun.
The thing is, I’ve never taken a trip I didn’t love. It doesn’t matter where we go, it’s the fact that we get to go that matters. We got to go to Dublin this January, and it was a completely unique adventure. We enjoyed every damp, chilly minute.
