We decided to walk the Camino de Santiago—a pilgrimage that starts at the border of France and Spain and runs nearly 500 miles before reaching its terminus in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela—while in Ireland. Thousands of pilgrims make the journey every year, and last September we decided to join them. After a few weeks planning, and mailing a hefty box of gear home to lighten our packs, we said goodbye to the Emerald Isle and flew to Spain to start walking. I was unprepared physically, mentally and emotionally. It turned out to be one of the most significant things I’ve ever done.

I learned a lot while walking in Spain—about myself, the power of the mind, the importance of a personal journey, and perhaps most of all, that nothing is impossible, if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I’ve been meaning to write more about the Camino. Sometimes I stay up at night, thinking about it, how to write about what happened over the 30 days we hiked through Spain. But I’m still working to organize my thoughts, to find the words to properly express everything that happened. For now, I’ll leave you with a few pictures.

When we initially set out on this trip, we had a general idea of where we wanted to visit, but no definite plans. The idea was to not think too far ahead, and instead let the trip take us where we were meant to go. When we arrived in Sao Paulo — a place I thought I would love, but didn’t — we wound up staying only three days, opting instead to head to the rainforest to live in a wooden hut with the geckos and butterflies and drink caipirinhas for a week. Our plan to travel 5 weeks through Morocco ended after only three weeks when we suddenly booked a next-day flight to Barcelona — a city I had desperately wanted to see, but hadn’t planned to get to this time around. And our one month in the Emerald Isle has stretched into two.

We’ve been making travel arrangements as we go, rarely looking more than 4 or 5 days in the future. Sometimes the lack of planning has put us in less-than-perfect situations — like the time we spent 14 hours at the Uruguay/Brazil border waiting for a bus that didn’t come until 2 in the morning — but we’ve never had any serious problems. The benefit, the ability to change our minds, however, has been immense.

Little over a month ago, I was planning to buy a one-way ticket to Thailand to fulfill my dreams of riding elephants through the jungle and learning how to cook Thai food. And then I heard about the Camino, and I realized that Asia was meant to be a different chapter of my adventure book.

Over the past couple of weeks our plan has unfolded. In a few days we board a plane to Spain to begin the Camino de Santiago de Compostela — a 500-mile route that runs across Northern Spain.

For more than a thousand years, pilgrims from all over the world have walked the road to Santiago. And this year, we will join them. Many people walk The Way for religious reasons — to find God. Others walk to find resolution, to grieve, to make a change in their lives. Some terminally ill pilgrims walk the road to die. I don’t know yet what I hope to find. This year has already presented me with more lasting learnings than I could’ve imagined, all of which arose organically, naturally. But the one resounding piece of advice from everyone I’ve talked to and read about who has done the Camino is “It will change you.”

So, we’re packing our bags, mailing some things home, and flying to Spain. We will walk for 30 days, from Pamplona to Santiago. And once the trail is done, so is our trip. For now. I still intend to ride elephants through the jungle and learn how to cook Thai. But maybe next year, when the time is right. For now, we are walking, and then returning to the US for the holidays, to spend them with family and friends we haven’t seen since February. But not until after one last adventure. After finishing the Camino, we’re heading to Barcelona — that city I loved only through photographs until I unexpectedly landed on it’s streets a few months ago, and began loving it in the flesh — to catch a cruise ship back to Miami.

It’s funny how when you don’t plan too much, you get exactly what you wanted.

A few weeks ago we got ambitious and went to the beach. We walked along the shoreline, across craggy stones, and sat in the sand. Derek and Rob eventually worked up the insanity courage to jump in the surf.

Even at the beach, staring into the Atlantic, you never forget you’re in Ireland. Rolling green hills dip into the water and cows graze behind you. Up on a hill, not so far away, sits a castle.

Below, photos of our Irish beach experience.

We’ve been in Ireland now for two weeks (or is it more?). A few days were spent in bleak, rainy Dublin. If you’ve ever been to Dublin, you might understand why I felt slighted and a bit disappointed after arriving. Being part Irish (isn’t everyone?), I had longed to go. There’s a brand of romantic magic associated with Ireland and it’s people, and I smelled not a whiff of it in Dublin. It wasn’t until we boarded the bus to Cork that I began to take heart again. As I looked out the window, through the rain, I saw shimmering, at times unearthly, greens smiling back from the landscape. “The Emerald Isle…I get it now,” I said to myself.

We’re staying with an Irish family in a big old stone house on a hill near the coast. We spend our days picking produce from the garden and pushing back against nature on the three acres surrounding the house, which includes a patch of forest. From my bedroom window I can see cows.

Nights are spent in front of the fire (yes, while the US experiences a heatwave, Ireland is in the peak of summer, where 60 degrees and sunny warrants shorts and T-shirts, and releases you from whatever thing it is that has to get done just so you can run out and have the sunlight touch your skin — quick, before it’s gone). Tina is a writer and her partner John is a blues musician, giving the house a wonderfully creative undercurrent. Books occupy the hallways and are stacked in corners and on tables. Music streams through the house and out the windows into the nature beyond. John’s bandmate, Rob, a 24 year old with a gravelly voice capable of being utterly heartbreaking, also lives here. It’s an environment that innately nurtures creativity, and has my brain working on a plane of proficiency I haven’t experienced in a long, long time.

Tina, being a writer, always has a great story at the ready. While doing dishes one morning, Tina and I started talking about my reasons for taking this trip. I told her of my life before, and how I wanted a change. We then got on the topic of happiness. I told her that whenever there is a dandelion to be blown or a statue to be rubbed and wish to be cast, I make the same simple wish I’ve always made: “To be happy.” Instead of wishing for good health or tickets to that concert or a new car, I wished for happiness. It was both modest and all-encompassing at the same time.

Tina then told me the following story.

“You’ve heard of the Irish travelers? A bit like gypsies, they’re groups that have traveled and lived off the land since the famine. There’s a local traveler woman with five kids. She always manages to provide for her family, feed and clothe them, with things she manages herself and with the help of friends. Her only constant concern is having socks for the children. She doesn’t often run into them and people typically didn’t hand down socks. So she decided to pray. She prayed that she would be able to cover her kids’ feet. The next day a man came in a truck with a huge bag. ‘Mam, I’m not sure if these are of any use to you, but if you want em, you can have em,’ and he handed her the bag. Inside was a mass of socks. She thanked the man, and then thanked God for answering her prayer. She gathered all the kids around to go through them, pairing them up, and in that entire big bag no two socks were alike.”

I stood for a while, and then understood. Specificity is key. It isn’t good enough to wish for happiness. You must be specific in what your definition of happiness is if you want to actually get there.

After days of raking grass or picking peas, I find myself thinking a lot about the future and my definition of happiness. I’ve come to realize it’s much different than it was just six months ago. Back then, I had an idea of what happiness (and other things tied up with it, like success, for example) was. Now I know. (And I don’t mean small things like puppies and tacos — don’t get me wrong, I can and have waxed poetic about both of these things. What I mean is a greater sense of happiness — that calmness that can fill your chest with warmth heavy like honey.) I know I owe this realization to the last six months on the road, and to my time in West Cork.

Ireland has always seduced me. Being here I can now say that this land has a magnetism I’ve never before experienced. It’s almost as if this trip was begun with Ireland at its center, and without realizing, I followed the siren call. This picturesque island knowingly pulled me through the past six months until I wound up on its shores. And while I know we’re set to leave it in a month, I also know without a doubt that I’ll be back. I’m not sure when, but I have a feeling I’ll be a little older and a lot happier.

But when I realized my days left in Paris were numbered, I began to panic. One reason being, the knowledge that we were spending two months here led us to hang loose and push back some of the big-time tourist activities like, you know, going up the Eiffel Tower or actually going inside the Louvre. The other reason is I simply don’t have enough time to eat as many pastries as I’d like.

I had never considered myself a sweet-tooth, or someone who particularly liked deserts. But when I came to Paris, I figured I had to try some of their famous sweets, ahem, for science. Having tasted confections from some of the finest pastry chefs in the world, I’m now a convert. And lucky for me, Paris’ stunningly beautiful, utterly delicious, sugar confections cost only 2 to 3 euros a piece, which just makes my cash-poor heart go pitter-pat.

Below are some of my favorite sweet things from the city of lights.

Raspberry Macaroon
One sight of this pretty pastry, and I knew it had to be mine. Regular macaroons, delicate cakey-cookies sandwiched with jam or cream, are delicious enough. But add a handful of fresh raspberries and they become irrisistable. Not all pâtisseries carry these beauties, but when I walk by one that does, I’m drawn like a moth to a sweet, sweet flame.

Tarte au Citron
Like a lemon meringue pie, minus the meringue. These clean, bright tarts are one of my favorite ways to end a meal.

Divorce
When one eclair isn’t enough, there’s the divorce. A coffee and chocolate eclair side-by-side, connected by cream. Need I say more?

Paris-Brest
Legend has it that this wheel-shaped pastry was invented for a bicycle race run between the cities of Paris and Brest (because we all know how pastries are the breakfast of champions). Sprinkled with sliced almonds, the pastry is made of a light dough called choux paste, and then filled with a praline cream, making it heavy and light at the same time, and always delicious.

Kouign Amaan
So, this isn’t really a Parisian specialty, but instead hails from nearby Brittany. I was introduced to this ridiculously delicious cake thanks to a french friend who grew up in the region. The Paula-Dean amounts of butter in the recipe make it for special occasions only, and I’m glad there were other people there at the time to help eat it, or I would’ve destroyed it solo in one sitting. The best way to describe it is if a sticky bun and a croissant had a delicious, delicious love child.

Did I miss something delicious? Tell me about your favorite Parisian pastries in the comments below.

melange: an unorganized collection or mixture; a medley

And I don’t need to spell out the first part. Suddenly my eyes weren’t so bleary anymore.

I understand that different cultures have different languages, and in these languages, things tend to make sense. But before people go off naming things all willy-nilly, you’d think some due diligence would be done. After all, a bouquet of various male parts doesn’t sound like an appetizing way to start the day…for most people.

So what is a wiener melange? It turns out, it’s not just rocket fuel for porn stars and women of ill repute. In reality, it’s a drink similar to a cappuccino but typically made with a milder coffee. Huh.

The number of vendors, and pushy touts, can be overwelming, which is why you should have a gameplan. Here, we outline our three-course plan of attack, and give you tips that will have you walking away fat and happy.

Starter on the East Side
On the east side of the Fna, near the rows of orange juice vendors, are several carts serving up steaming bowls of snails. These chewy morsels, served in a throat-clearingly spicy pepper broth, are served shell-on for only 10 dirhams ($1.28 USD at 7.83 dirhams to a dollar). Arm yourself with a toothpick and get to eating.

Hit the Stalls
Walking through the rows of food stalls can be a confusing experience. Differentiated by numbers, many of the stalls serve similar menus, making it difficult to know which one you should pick. And the touts don’t make it any easier. Maneuvering through the stalls, you’re likely to come face to face with pushy salespeople trying to persuade you into their establishment. And they do everything from shouting catch phrases (“Stall number seven, take you to heaven!”) to telling outright lies (“We know Jamie Oliver and have a restaurant with Wolfgang Puck!”) to steer foot traffic. Don’t be swayed by the hustle, and instead peer past the touts to see the actual stalls. If the seats are barren, smile and tell them politely that you’ve already eaten (a surefire way to quickly refocus their attention on someone else). As in many dining situations, a long line is a sign that the food is good, and fresh, so head towards the crowds. Just remember not to linger once you get your chance at the plate, as there will undoubtedly be others hungrily eyeing up your spot.

Finish with a Bang
Punctuate your meal with a piece of spicy ginger cake from a cart on the south border of the square. But take note: this isn’t your typical gingerbread. This tongue-biting cake is so pungent it’s served in shavings instead of fat slices. Due to the intensity of flavor, one serving of cake is more than enough for two people to share. If you’re traveling solo, or are looking for something warm, opt instead for a glass of equally delicious, and equally spicy, hot ginger tea.