It’s the peat. Ireland just has this certain something that makes the country feel incredibly unique; a something that I couldn’t quite identify for the first three weeks I spent in the country.
I’ve concluded that if Leprechauns, fairies and the such exist, then surely they all congregate in Ireland’s “Wild West.” From Galway City I drove through hours of brown-speckled hills weakly lit with the few and tiny bits of sunshine able to wrestle from behind gray rain clouds and drove into the heart Connemara.
And just for the record, …

Dingle is a gem; this quiet little unassuming peninsula lies just north of the Ring of Kerry but is a world apart in terms of pace and welcome. And although nearly all the Irish you meet are ready with a warm “hello” and a bit of friendly chat, the welcome on Dingle Peninsula is particularly open.
Most of the Dingle peninsula is a Gaeltacht area, which means that Irish is the first spoken language. That’s what makes it so fantastic. Everyone still also speaks English, but in this tiny pocket of …

My Nissan Micra rental car was tiny…whatever you’re thinking, think smaller. Perhaps for this reason, the decision to sleep in said car for an evening wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had. But for all of the faults in the plan, it did show me just how far the Irish will go for the sake of some friendly hospitality.
Leaving from Cork, another backpacker from the hostel hitched a ride and we decided to travel the Beara Peninsula together. This section of Ireland is best known for the Ring of Kerry…but …

After yesterday’s rant it still seems a little self indulgent to admit that I spent ten whole days in Slovenia’s capital city and I really didn’t do a whole lot. Helen and I were getting burnt out so we decided to head straight for the capital and spend a few days purely relaxing before the street theatre madness descended upon the city.
One of the biggest indulgences of the week? Movies!!!! And not just the bootleg DVDs that I bought in Nepal to pass the time (I know it’s wrong to …

I’m actually a bit sad to leave Florence so soon…even though we’ve been here for six days, the city is really beautiful with undeniable charm. I can actually imagine my self living here, which is not something I can say about most big cities. But the RTW trip has to continue! Jenn’s uncle highly suggested a stop in Assisi –in fact he absolutely raved about the gorgeous countryside and that was enough of an incentive for us to add this small city onto the itinerary.
Trains really are one of …

I was thoroughly exhausted from nearly 40 transit hours (Kathmandu to Delhi – 22 hours in Dehli – Dehli to Helsinki and then onward to Milan) when I landed in Milan, then Helen and I bused our way to the Central Train Station to then turn around hoofed it the 15 minute walk to our hostel rendezvous meet-point with Jenn. Jenn arrived earlier in the day and spent her hours wandering through the parks and panting her way up the windy staircase to the top of Milano’s beautiful Duomo. …

Trekking in the Himalayas – just saying this phrase conjures up images of beautiful sweeping mountain-scapes with some of the tallest mountains in the world right at eye-level.  Helen and I, with our friend Cara (also a volunteer at the monastery last month) decided that a five day trek into the mountains was the ideal length of time to: 1) see beautiful mountains, and 2) not kill ourselves from physical exertion.  We booked ourselves onto a five day trek through our guesthouse (Noble Inn) that would take us to …

The dilapidated bus that was to be our next means of transportation was my next “welcome to India moment” – the bus had been around far longer than I have even been alive and the last paint job was probably administered around the time I was weaning from the bottle.  It was quite a piece of work let me tell you.  There was no reason to desire tinted windows on the bus because they were so dirty and cloudy that light could only seep through them anyway.
There are no …