Moving Day

Today is our moving/packing/shipping day!  We got back Thursday, and while I didn't want the trip to end, it felt REALLY nice being able to not live out of a suitcase and be back in our own home.  We've been prepping all weekend, checking things off bucket lists, packing, organizing, cleaning, and now the movers are finally here and are packing us up as we speak.  It's kind of surreal and I can't actually believe that we'll be on in a plane to the US in 48 hours.  I honestly think we've both been too busy and too frazzled to even stop and think about what this means and how we're actually feeling.

We also had our going away party this weekend - if you can even call it that - which consisted of a bunch of our friends all gathering at our favorite local pub for some low key drinks.  It was a great turn out and really good to have everyone I love in one place and it made me feel very...blessed.  Which is cheesy and cliche but it's true.  We received a lot of incredibly thoughtful going away gifts and really meaningful cards from our friends that I know I'll keep forever.  We've been so lucky with our friends here which has been such a humongous blessing.

I said goodbye to several friends on Saturday, several more yesterday at a girls brunch, and I'll probably see a few more tonight and tomorrow night before we actually leave.  (Drew was like "Lauren, you've gotta quit dragging this out.  You have to tell them all goodbye eventually."  NO I DON'T!  Leave me alone!)  Saying goodbye gives me anxiety and I don't wanna do it!

These last two days, we'll...walk around the city, hit up our favorite places a few more times, continue numbing ourselves and not thinking about what this all means, and try not to cry.  I feel like I should be feeling...more.  But I'm not.  I'm just numb.  And sad.  And weirdly excited.  And numb.  Maybe this means that it's just time to go..?  Our time here is done, and that's ok..?  I don't know and I don't get it but for now, I'll just let it ride.

Here we have Lauren (who I also call Ladonna, one of my best friends), Tracy (whose been with us since Day 1, and is staying another year in Dublin, lucky bitch), and my other friend Lauren B. (who I met through the American Women's Club)

And here's Diana (who I met through Drew's coworker, from NYC), and Deena (who I met through Meredith, works at Yelp)

Drew and Ian, one of his best friends that we've been tight with since our second month in Dubs

Me and Autumn, one of the main players in my Dublin life since the beginning!

All four of us!

Us and TP - couldn't have done this journey without her!

Drew's friend Anthony from Boston - they work together

Me and Micah!  Another Dallas transplant that I became really tight with since they moved here in October.  (We also went to Istanbul with them)

Drew with Jeff (Micah's husband), Anthony, and Andrew (another friend from NYC we met awhile ago)

It was a ton of fun and very bittersweet seeing them all and telling them all goodbye.  Ugh.  I hate life changes.

Anyway...all day Sunday, we laid out everything we owned in our tiny "dining room" area, much like we did in Dallas before we left, so we could show the packers what to pack and take and ship.  I don't think I realized we had that much stuff but it was a ton more than we anticipated!

Yikes.

This is a blurry picture of Drew riding his bike home along the canal after a dinner in Ranelagh on a lovely evening in Dublin.

And me walking home by myself, enjoying the moment and the sun setting on our quiet street, taking it all in.

Gonna go contemplate my fate.  More later.

Saint Jean de Luz

The very last stop on our 3-week tour was a tiny French town just over the Spanish border called Saint Jean de Luz for two days.  It almost combined the charming tiny French village you think of (like the movie Chocolat) plus the beach town vibe of San Sebastian.  They had evidently just had a festival the week before, where it was REALLY hoppin', but then the city shut down for a week or two (while we were there) to gear up for tourist season in July.  This made the town have a much sleepier feel to it than we thought, but it was still delightful all the same.  We did the Rick Steves' walking tour, wandered around, ate yummy food, watched World Cup games, ate ice cream, did some hiking, and just attempted to savor these last moments of our trip.  Here are some pics:

Dinner at Kako, a hotel recommendation for classic French food.

They were known for their Cote de Boeuf with frites, so naturally we got that.

Sunset on the water our first night there.

This pic is far away, but I became enthralled with this idyllic cliffside field thing on the far side of the beach.  It looked like something you might see in a fairy tale, with a random path leading over the hill and a tiny cottage perched up high.  So I made Drew go exploring with me.

Then we stopped for ice cream where they made our scoops into beautiful flowers.  

Everyone told us (and everything we'd read) that there were more Michelin star restaurants per capita in San Sebastian and Saint Jean de Luz than like...anywhere else in the world.  Though we didn't want to spend the money and had low expectations, we figured we'd splurge on our last night at Zoko Moko.  We consider ourselves "foodies" but not necessarily the snooty Michelin-star tasting-menu frou-frou kind - so we were skeptical about this whole damn thing.  But really...this place was worth every euro and worth every Michelin star because we love love LOVED everything we put in our mouths!

The "Amuse Bouche", which consisted of some sort of sandwich, some parmesan crisps with a creamy dip, and a frittata with chorizo.  Tiny food but it packed a punch!

This was my "warm octopus salad with green beans, green and white asparagus, mushrooms,  and bacon".

This was Drew's slow cooked "farm egg" with ham and some sort of breadcrumb Morel stew.  I didn't get it but it was damn good.

My cod with Viscayenne chiles, pink garlic, spinach, and hazelnut butter.

Drew's Boeuf du Pays Basque with a variety of veg and beef cheek-stuffed carrots.  

Dessert: Triple Chocolate Txuri Beltz 2014 (the exact title - no clue what it means), but it was basically a layer of crunchy chocolate goodness, then a layer of chocolate mousse and ice cream, then....

...they poured rich chocolate sauce all over it and melted it all together and I did everything I could NOT to lick my plate clean.  One of the best desserts I've ever had, no joke.

Then as a bonus, we got "petits fours", or really just caramel crunch and stuffed pretzel goodness in a chocolatey caramel sauce.  

Cheers to a magical trip!  And the end of an era!  And the end of our lives as we know it.

That was dramatic...but that's how I felt.  We had just experienced 3 weeks of bliss and I knew that what awaited us in Dublin was packing, goodbyes, and a one-way ticket home to Dallas that we still had mixed feelings about.  So we just soaked up our last evening, cried a little on the plane ride home (me), and braced ourselves for what lied ahead.  More on that to come.

We obviously loved our trip and will probably never have the chance to do something like that again...for a long, long time, at least.  We lived it up and made the most of it and took advantage and enjoyed our time together seeing this part of the world.  Goodbye, Second Honeymoon!  I shall miss you and think of you every day for a long long time.

San Sebastian

Ahhh, San Sebastian.  A belle époque European beach city you might think of in the 1950's or 60's, with the bright blue water, the high rise unchanging resorts on the waterfront, the outdoor cafes on the promenade...just pure nostalgia and happiness and beauty in my opinion.  We enjoyed two quiet low key days here full of eating and drinking and beach time, along with some hiking and a stop by the city aquarium cause I'm a sucker for that stuff.  So this was basically like every other part of our trip.

View from our pretty hotel room.

View on the beach.  No nudists out this time.

More flowers and palm trees and city centres.

I'm clearly a sucker for old school government buildings.

A blurry sunset picture over the harbor.

We hiked up to the "mountain" on the east side of the bay one day.  There's a large statue of Jesus that looks over the city, kinda like in Rio.

Two sweaty hikers.

Peace!  

Now onto the aquarium!  This is a huge whale skeleton because evidently the whaling industry used to be huge in San Sebastian.

A trippy light tank full of jelly fish.  

Starfish!

They had a MASSIVE tank where all kinds of huge fish swam in front of you and over you, and this 8-foot long bull shark kept passing over me.  And I got scared.

A blurry picture of a huge eel, like the one in The Little Mermaid.  No thank you.

A crazy cuttlefish!

Another giant eel hiding in a clay pot.
(Remember in Super Mario Brothers with N64 and there was an underwater level where you had to lure this giant eel out of the ship so Mario could get in?  That's what this reminds me of.)

I don't know what these guys are but they are about the size of a large straw and they kept poking their "heads" in and out of their hidey-holes.  Kinda funny.

Tons of Nemos!

Relaxing at a Gintoneria - these Spaniards LOVE their gin and tonics.  And that means I do too now.

And lastly...our pintxos!  We went on a pinxtos crawl through the old town and ate a couple bites and drank some wine at each place before moving on to the next ones.  It was so fun and so cheap and so delicious and filling!

If you ever find yourself in Northern Spain and are looking for a bit of relaxing and great food, San Sebastian is your place.  Besides all of the pintxos we mentioned above (Rick Steves has a great little crawl route that we took), they also have the highest number of Michelin stars per capita of any city in the world.  Overall, it was a great place to visit for a little fun in the sun!