Our Annual Holiday: An Encore

For most Brits, the annual "holiday" is a sacred institution. For those with school-aged kids, it is either the Easter Holiday or the Summer Holiday, and everything seems to be planned around this monumental event. And, for those of us without school-aged kids (which is still the case with us until next January), we try to avoid these holiday times at all cost. (I'm lucky in that the school I work at goes on Spring Break a week before the rest of the British schools and finishes for the summer three weeks before everyone else, so we have managed to avoid the main crowds for the past couple of years.)

Most holidays consist of jetting off to some sunny locale like the Costa del Sol, Greece, Turkey, or any number of islands -- the Canaries, the Azores, or the Cape Verde Islands, for example. "British" holidays don't really count as holidays for most people; I guess the UK isn't exotic enough, though I've been lucky enough to visit some pretty spectacular places here in Britain.

I can't speak for all international couples, but in our case a holiday is a bit of a complicated affair. I make sure that we schedule at least one trip back to the States a year; before we had Crumpet, it was much easier (and cheaper) to go back, so I sometimes managed two trips a year. The Other Half counts this trip as a holiday (and, according to our credit card bills, it qualifies as one), but as much as I love going home to visit my family and friends, I don't really consider these visits a holiday in the true sense of the word. To me, a holiday is a luxury; our trips back to the States are more of a necessity in my book. So we have to agree to disagree on that one.

Last month, we had a lovely kind of last-minute and unexpected holiday in Northern France, which would have been our "annual holiday," but we are now planning a second holiday (I know, it's a bit of an indulgence, but totally justified, in my opinion) to... drumroll, please... IRELAND!

Yes, we are headed to the Emerald Isle at the end of July -- incidentally, in the first week of the summer holidays I previously mentioned we try to avoid. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew will be meeting us there, and we are renting a cottage together. We are still working out the details, but we will be staying in County Clare, in the West -- home to such natural wonders as the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren; and just a short ferry ride away are the mystical, car-free Aran Islands.

In the nearly nine years since I first came to England (nearly five of which I have actually lived here), I have never been to Ireland, even though it's just a short hop away. So I am beyond excited.

Castle and ruins and pubs... oh my!

Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland