Despite the fact that the lady in the Claddagh store told me I had pudgy fingers, Ireland was more than I ever thought it could be. Looking back, it went by in the blink of an eye. But while I was there, everything seemed to slow down. No one was ever in a hurry (which…

Amsterdam and Barcelona are polar opposites. If the cities were high school stereotypes, Amsterdam would be the stoner everyone was friends with to score beer but then dropped out and no one ever heard from again. Barcelona is the art kid with fake glasses and a really interesting party trick. I have to admit, my…

The world is a strangely huge and small place all at once. I had to pay hundreds of dollars and plan for months to visit somewhere on the other side of the world, yet the people I met there were strangely similar to me in both looks and mannerisms. To be clear, these are not…

London was a place that held a lot of expectations for me. After all, it’s the land of Harry Potter and Hugh Grant and, to a lesser extent, the queen. After a whirlwind weekend of Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Leicester Square, the Tower of London, the Globe Theatre and, most importantly, the…

I have to admit I was terrified of customs. I was so scared that I would somehow make it all the way to Dublin and be thwarted because I didn’t have a work visa, or my passport wasn’t in the system. “How long are you in Ireland?” “Just for the night then I’ll be in…