our last family photo of the Bigger Trip (Dublin, May 30, 2026)

The last stop of our trip was Dublin, Ireland where we spent four days wandering the city, listening to the street musicians on Grafton Street, learning a lot in the various museums and soaking up the (rare for Ireland) sun-filled days. We stayed in a hostel right in the city centre, so got one last chance to cram ourselves into one room. This was a popular one, though, because we each had our own little cubby bed with a curtain, a light, a shelf and an outlet. The hostel knows their audience! And right next door was a delicious sushi restaurant which we ended up eating at three out of four nights. 🙂

We arrived in the late afternoon on Tuesday, and Steffen got straight to work. The rest of us needed to move our bodies so headed to a nearby playground. Our days at playgrounds are few and far between, but it is still nice to see how the girls can play occasionally. There was a little boy there who had lost his ball in a tree a week before, and all the girls worked together to hoist Luisa up into the tree to rescue it. The boy and his father were very grateful! From there, we walked down to the River Liffey and across to the Temple Bar area which was crowded and fun to see. Steffen joined us for pizza dinner and we called it a day.

The next day, the girls slept in while Steffen and I grabbed some breakfast nearby. Then the girls and I went out to explore. The first stop was Dublin castle, that was unfortunately closed due to “preparation for events during Ireland’s forthcoming Presidency of the EU”. But we were able to walk around to the Chester Beatty library where we enjoyed the gorgeous gardens. On our way to the gardens, we spotted the Christ Church Cathedral. So beautiful!

From there we walked to St Stephen’s Green, grabbing some to-go pizza to enjoy in the park (with a million other people). Everyone was very excited to see the sunshine!

Then it was time to visit The Little Museum of Dublin, which we all loved. You go on a 30-minute tour where someone tells stories of Dublin’s history and then there are several rooms filled to the brim with memorabilia, all donated over the years from various collections. It was so interesting and you could easily spend several hours looking at everything. I took a photo of Olivia and Luisa at the podium where JFK stood in 1963, but there were countless interesting items as well. We also loved the huge dollhouse.

We then walked along Grafton street, enjoying the musicians, stopping in some of the shops and checking out the infamous Molly Malone statue.

The next day we started out at the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland where we had another wonderful storyteller tour, taking us through various myths and legends of Ireland. It was very interesting! We then walked around more, stopping by Henrietta Street which we had heard about the day before as being a place where 850 people lived in just a few buildings in the early 1900’s. We then walked by The Spire, then across the river again to Trinity College. There was no interest from the girls to visit the Book of Kells, so we just walked around and enjoyed the grounds.

On Friday, Steffen had the day off work, and we decided to go on a side quest. He was only one country away from “50 by 50” (50 countries visited by 50 years old) and wanted to do it with the whole family, so off we went to Northern Ireland. I guess there is some controversy over counting it as its own country since it is a “constituent country” because it is a part of the United Kingdom, alongside England, Scotland, and Wales. But for our purposes, we have counted each of the four countries as separate countries.

We were blessed with another lovely day weather-wise and even though we got off to a late/rough start (kids sleeping in, realizing we should bring our passports and getting them took longer than expected, and not really knowing where in Northern Ireland we wanted to go), we ended up really enjoying it. We thought we would just walk around Newry, but when we got to the parking lot, a woman there recommended Slieve Gullion Forest Park. And we are so glad she did! It was a huge park with a nice playground and then several walking paths. And we made it back to the hostel to enjoy one last sushi dinner at Takara Ramen & Deli Sushi Bar. Steffen and I then ventured out to The Temple Bar for some live music and people watching.

And just like that, it was our last day of the Bigger Trip. So sad and impossible to put into words. The end of such an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience that we will be eternally grateful for. Steffen hadn’t gotten a chance to really see Dublin yet and our flight wasn’t until later in the evening, so we had time to show him the highlights. We saw this band and just couldn’t pull ourselves away until the rain started falling and they had to pack up. It seemed like a very fitting end.

We then boarded our last of 25+ flights over 10 months and flew from Dublin to Amsterdam. Since we arrived late, we decided to spend the night at a hotel near the airport. That also gave us time to have a leisurely breakfast together the next morning where we could reflect on the trip before hoping on the train back to Germany.

“Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” — Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides