We’re back home in cosy little Cork after our exciting adventures, tired and looking forward to sleeping in our own bed but also feeling a little unsettled.

To be true, it’s been a year since I’ve been anywhere other than the quiet, gentle towns of Ireland’s south-west and I’m feeling delightfully stirred up by all the magic that’s out there.

A large European city has a buzz like a happy bee in a blossoming meadow, darting from flower to flower to drink in the myriad sweetness that each beauty has to offer.

There’s the good, the bad and everything in between.

There are drunk winos with toothless grins on the street:  “Have yis any change, luv?”

There are chic young ladies wearing Ted Baker boots under their Gucci coats and their Prada handbags.

There are the young twenty-somethings, scurrying along with their Zara and TK Maxx bags, worrying about how they’ll pay their rent this month on their shitty minimum wages as they pop into Starbucks to have a soy-cinnamon-latte (grande if you please) with their girlfriends.

There are exquisite authentic Italian restaurants where the Shiraz is like velvet, the waiters are ridiculously arrogant yet charming and the garlic bread is so deliciously mind-blowing you realize that food really can be better than sex (maybe).

There are streets with fancy names like Northumberland and Pembroke with their grand orange-brick old-school Georgian houses and offices and nestled in among them the posh Embassies.

The rain pours down but it’s ok because you can pop into a thriving cafe full of black leather settees and young people on their laptops studying or facebooking and just generally rocking out the ultra hip new generation as they sip on their €10 lattes (joking… they were only €9.50).

Ah yes, after so long tucked away from it all, the bustling metropolis of Dublin has got me all riled up and ready to join in on the fun.

All I need to do now is figure out how to afford €10 lattes on a daily basis…

Ciao darlings!

Lizzie xxx

(Side-note: €10 lattes do not exist in Dublin to the best of my knowledge but for the sake of this post and my over-active imagination, let’s pretend they do.)