Where we are now (and what is next)
That is it, our month long trek through Ireland is over. Today, we flew back to DC and our primary refrain seems to be a very whiny, “I don’t wanna go back”. Ireland is cold and rainy, but also beautiful, with the friendliest people, and we found a pattern that seemed like it might be sustainable. (Also, about the feature photo here, just evidence that the Irish have a great sense of humor.)
Not having a DC house anymore, we will stay with our friend Reggie Van Lee in DC. Tomorrow morning, Stephanie will fly to Florida to fetch Colby (the dog) from our daughter and son-in-law, Karina and Ethan, and to see our other daughter, Meghan. She will work from Tampa for the week and I will work at Colby’s (the business). The following weekend, she will drive Colby to DC to fetch me and then we will continue on together through the night to Ellsworth, ME; hopefully having a birthday breakfast with Erik in UMaine Orono. I will work from Ellsworth until May 9, when I drive Colby to my mother’s on Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend before returning to DC to bring Colby through the medical gambit required for him to travel to Europe. While I am in Ellsworth, I will finish re-siding our wood garage, and I will work at Colby’s from May 12 until the 21st. Stephanie will work in Ellsworth until somewhere around the 19th, when she will fly to DC. On the 22nd, we will drive to Brooklyn, spend the night there, and then catch the Queen Mary II the following day for our eight day cruise.
Exploring the world
We are leaving Ireland with a few observations:
- We were amazed at how few pets we saw and left convinced that this country is not primed for me to open a Colby’s.
- There are more pubs per square block than I think I’ve ever seen anywhere, but the pubs stop serving food at about 7:00 pm. And when we say they don’t serve food, we mean any food. No desserts, no bar food, no salted nuts. I don’t know how people can drink that much without balancing any of it with food. At least the pups close at 11:00 pm instead of 2:00 am.
- Food (at least at the grocery store) is so much cheaper. Part of it is likely that the proportions are smaller, but that can’t be the full explanation. And the food generally is much better.
- There was virtually no homelessness. I do not remember seeing a single homeless person in Galway or our first trek to Connemara, and can count on one hand the number of unhoused people I saw in Kilkenny. Dublin had more, but nothing like any large city I’ve been to in the US.
- There is so much less security in Ireland. We went into major attractions like Kilkenny and Dublin Castles, or St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and never had to show our bags for a securing check. In fact, we accidentally went into Dublin Castle with a backpack despite signs forbidding them. When a security guard came up to us to discuss it, she only asked that we move the backpack to our front so that we do not accidentally bump it into anything.
Digital nomad life & learnings
So far, we have found it definitely worth looking for a good apartment in the old city. In both Galway and Kilkenny, we were able to find first rate co-working spaces within a few blocks of our house, and our daily walking brought us through interest neighborhoods, and either right by the grocery store or very close to it. This meant that we were able to work late, stop at the grocery store on the way home, cook dinner, and then head to a pub for a few minutes. One warning is that the Galway grocery store closed at 7:00 pm, which is 2:00 pm in DC or Massachusetts, so we had to work shopping into our day.
In terms of picking apartments, we have concluded that we should first find a good co-working space, and then find an apartment near it.
We also learned the importance of good internet. For some reason, my computer did not connect to the internet in our Kilkenny apartment and Stephanie had problems with Teams program at our Galway coworking station. It is important to have backup plans. Stephanie was able to move her meetings to Zoom, and my backup computer connected to the home wifi.
For the co-working spaces, we recommend making sure they have multiple phone booths (soundproof-ish stalls) if you have lots of phone calls and meetings like we do, Our co-working space in Galway also had large monitors at some desks, which was VERY handy.
Next, we have found asking out AirBnB landlords for help is sometimes very useful for finding resources like the coworking space. We did not yet know to first book the co-working space when we went to Kilkenny and would not have been able to get into the WeDo without our landlord’s help.
We found that – despite out best efforts at discipline – Galway felt more like a vacation during which we also worked a lot. By Kilkenny, we had fallen into a comfortable routine. We walked to the coworking space at around 10:00 am, worked until lunch somewhere between 1:00 and 4:00 pm, and then worked some more until somewhere around 7:00 to 9:00 pm.
Along those lines, I do not have Stephanie’s discipline and found it far too easy to have the vacation mind of eating large meals and ordering dessert, Again, more discipline snuck in in Kilkenny than I had in Galway, but I had better develop more for our next stages.
We now are thinking about what our work life will be like next time. The big difference, after our initial three weeks in Plymouth, England, will be that the time change will increase by an hour; meaning that 5:00 pm on the USA East Coast will be 11:00 pm in Brussels or Paris. It will be interesting to see if this means that we will stay at the coworking space an hour later; which we assume we will (but hope we won’t). We will also be having French class three mornings a week, and homework. This could move our days from feeling very relaxed to feeling quite packed. We will see.
As we prepare to return to the States for five weeks, we have been discussing at length what we will bring with us when we return in five weeks. Most importantly, we are both clear that we over packed. My goal is to fit all of my supplies in a single backpack. Stephanie plans on keeping both her travel and day backpacks (one on her back and the other on her front, like a turtle), but with both less full. This combination should enable us to better attach a dog and haul a collapsed but heavy crate.
On our next trek, I am only bringing four sport socks, six nicer socks, eight pairs of underwear, two t-shirs, four polos, three pairs of long pants (that are made of new fangled material instead of cotton), two long sleeved shirts, one pair of leather shoes, and one pair of mid-support hiking shoes, one sweatshirt, one jacket, one ball cap, one book, two universal power converter blocks (blocks that let any nation’s plugs work with any other nation’s outlets), two laptops (one backup, which I will share with Stephanie as her back up), two cell phone charging cables, one electric tooth brush, one hair brush, one tweezer, one nail file, one large nail clipper, one book, two cloth napkins, two silicon collapsible egg cups (the eggs really are MUCH better when the Europeans don’t refrigerate them), and a battery pack for recharging my cell phone (I am bringing a small, single charge one. Stephanie is bringing a larger, hard core one). I am debating regrowing my beard, in part because a beard trimmer takes less space than a razer, blades and (most importantly) a can of shaving cream. To what I am sure is Brandford’s delight, I am going to leave the huge headphones he told me not to buy and instead invest in a good (and tiny) pair of AirPods Pro 2s.
That is what I am packing for the trip. We will also stage a variety of supplies in a large Costco tub at Colby’s so that I can trade stuff out as we travel from one place to another and through different seasons. For example, we will keep winter gear in the tub, as well as specialty items like prescription diving masks. What to put in the tubs will be a significant bit of strategic discussion while we are in Maine.
Funny & unexpected moments
This past Thursday evening was funny. Our coworking space was on an ancient side alley, containing Kilkenny’s only remaining medieval gateway. As we reached the end of the alley, there was a barricade for the first time. We walked around it and started home, only to observe that all of the streets were barricaded and that there were police (“Garda” in Irish) everywhere. We stopped and asked one of the officers what was happening and he told us Donald Trump was visiting.
Stephanie and I were shocked that we had not heard about the trip and that Trump was following us around the world, but then the officer’s face lit up at having successfully snagged us. We then had a short but enjoyable conversation about US politics, at least it remained enjoyable until it became more interesting when he moved on to how immigrants are taking over Ireland, and that he has a place in Spain where the police know how to keep order. It turned out the street closure was for a city marathon.
Photo & video gallery
Resources & recommendations
We highly recommend the WeDo in KilKenny. To our disappointment, they did not have a public area with hot desks (desks you can rent for a day), but the space is immaculate and Tom, the manager, provided us with a small office for the two of us.
We also highly recommend the apartment we stayed in in Kilkenny, listed as “Luxury Penthouse Apartment, Medieval City Center” on AirBnB. It did have a surprising number of small things that need fixing, but Frank, the owner is a lovely man who picked us up at the train station and offered to drive us back (He is the first AirBnB host I have ever known who made the offer). The apartment could not be better placed on Butter Slip, it has a wonderful balcony, with views of both Kilkenny Castle on one side and the Cathedral in the other direction. Also on Butter Slip is Citronella, our favorite restaurant, about 100 feet away is the Dunnes grocery store, and about 100 feet away is Paris, Texis, our favorite pub.