When I visited friends in this area October of last year, the idea of actually living here was barely a twinkle in my eye. I’d wanted for some time to move abroad, and as a travel journalist doing a fair amount of globetrotting I was always considering the various places I visited as a potential place to land.
About half-way through my 10-day visit, it dawned on me that maybe Ireland could be the place. After all I have a good number of friends here (when I was in college in San Francisco I lived with a gang of Irish and we kept in touch all these years), it is an English-speaking country and it’s in Europe. It was a beautiful, sunny autumn day and I was sitting with my friend Sinead on the lovely patio of her cosy Irish country house when the idea first sprang to life. Maybe I could move here, continue my freelance writing, and get a little apartment in town…my brain buzzed with the excitement of possibilities.