Countdown to My Europe Trip

I leave for Europe in a little more than two weeks, and I couldn't be more excited. My parents took me to Ireland when I was a toddler, but I haven’t been back since. My memories of Dublin and Galway are patchy at best, and that’s part of why I’m so looking forward to seeing the country again. While I’m sure the experience was lovely as it happened, I wish I had been a little older to appreciate it more. For the last fifteen years, all I’ve wanted was to go back, to relive those moments that, in retrospect, are so much more precious to me.

For everything I can’t remember, a family photo album fills in some of the details: the rain and the ruins, a boat tour of the Cliffs of Moher, countless crumbling castles against murky Irish skies. In most of the pictures, I wear a bright pink rain jacket, and my mom and I sport matching platinum locks. Hers, stylishly disheveled and salon-expensive. Mine, paired with blunt bangs and invisible eyebrows. It was the early 2000s, after all.

After the recession, our family travel plans took a backseat to the rebuilding my parents' careers. The years following 2008 hit us pretty hard, but we still took beach trips to Wilmington—where we ended up moving when I was in high school—and the Outer Banks.

As a college student, I’ve interned in New York and made trips with friends to Philadelphia and Charleston and D.C. But compared to international travel, the East Coast of the U.S. has started to feel pretty small. I’m ready for something new. A real adventure.

My first stop? Dublin.

See you there.