It’s 6:48 pm in Toronto.

It’s 11:48pm in Ireland.

I know you are not supposed to think this way—counting the time change hours to figure out why you are ready for sleeping at 6:48pm, when you simply cannot allow yourself to fall asleep because the kids have Hebrew school and homework needs to be done and children need to be fed and gifted with all of their Irish goodies and dogs need to be picked up and bags need to be unpacked and stories and photos need to be shared and 1,192 emails need to be sorted through and broken things to fix and attitudes to readjust.

I know you aren’t supposed to think this way.

But, oh my heavenly days, it’s 11:48 pm in Ireland and my old lady bones are done tired.

So I made a large pot of coffee.

“You know, Ali, you can just make one cup. Or half a pot.”

“It’s like you don’t even know me at all, husband.”

When it comes to caffeination, I don’t kid around.

On our last night in Ireland, as we walked hand-in-hand down the main street in Adare, a lovely little town full of thatch-roofed homes and adorable little pubs, we stopped by a stream.

Our Canadian fingers wished on Canadian pennies and threw them into the stream.

I wished for more of this magic.

Because that’s what the past 7.5 days have been—a little piece of magic.

I have come away from days spent on the streets, farms, roads, piers, restaurants, markets in the likes of Dublin, Cork, Kinsale, Baltimore, Foynes, Adare feeling just plum full of something out of a dream. We immersed ourselves in the culture and met so many amazing people, each with a wonderfully interesting and fascinating story. We drank Guinness and Murphy’s and Irish whiskey (before 11am!) and Irish coffees (I even have a certificate for my perfect Irish coffee-making skills) and ate brown bread and soda bread and POTATOES!

(I did not, however, partake in the tripe and the black and white pudding, because black and white pudding is not what you’d expect it to be, not even a little bit.)

I have come home wanting my own garden and my own chickens and my own cows. I have come home wanting to bake my own bread every day—to live simply, off the things I can make on my own, can source locally, right under my nose.

I have come home wanting to use the words gorgeous and grand to describe everything lovely, even food.

I have come home inspired to do so many new things; to try so many new adventures; to tell you so many stories—after all, I did kiss the Blarney Stone and got myself a good dose of “the gift of the gab” and not the gift of the herpes simplex. (So, be prepared for the next little while to be Irish heavy—and I can only assume you are reading this in an Irish accent, yes?)

And mostly, I have come home ready to plan our next trip to Éire.

Because when it looks like this…how can you not?

But maybe I’ll have a little nap first.

Just a wee one.

Until the caffeine kicks in.