A dear friend has headed to Ithaca where the waters sparkle turquoise and the Greeks bear gifts of ouzo and honey... nothing to beware of there.
She offered us her home in Dublin. We jumped at it – goodbye grey skies of Ulster; hello blue skies of the Irish Republic.
I drive and himself is chief navigator on all trips.
"Don't shout, you always shout," he reminds me.
"Moi?" I tell him.
The problem starts when someone tells you to turn right a fraction of a second too late.
Once in the long ago, when our boy was four, he ended up squished on the back seat of the car with a large antique marble-topped commode that his granny had set her heart on. She wanted it as a side table.
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We promised to drive it home from Cork. It wasn't the easiest of rides for the small boy. Not least when we got lost and I drove around the roundabout at least twice.
"You drove twice round the roundabout," a voice piped from the marble-fronted potty box in the back.
He should have added: "Shoot me now."
Reader, I shouted. Nowadays, I could circle a roundabout 10 times and he'd stay schtum.
But let us rewind to last weekend in Dublin and not Cork – thank you Dr Google.
We found the place and plonked down in our friend's beautiful apartment – she is both creative and tasteful – only to wonder where she had hidden the TV.
It was not behind the gilt mirror above the fireplace. And then we remembered the reason why she is so creative and tasteful and has read so many books is because she doesn't have a TV.
Ah, we sighed. Our marriage is built on the bedrock of Pointless, Scandi noir and news.
Luckily she is also a wonderful cook so we sniffed her fancy oils and herbs. The trip was a journey back in time.
My husband spent a family holiday in Dublin in 1974 and remembered that very stretch of green grass at the front; the low concrete sea wall.
Down by that sea wall, we saw a grey heron, like an old man, sharp of elbow and spindly of leg. He launched himself, juddering into the wind.
In Dublin, we walked through the university where I once was a student. In the long ago, you might have got the odd American asking for directions to "Kelly's book". Now you're tripping over tourists.
We went to the art gallery and stared at the Caravaggio. It had hung for a long time in a Jesuit dining room looking down on God's soldiers spearing their potatoes.
It's a beautiful painting. It might just include a self portrait of the artist holding a lantern – see the burnished metal of the soldiers' armour; Christ's face set in resignation to his fate.
"You can tell a great artist by how he paints hands," I say.
I learned that from himself.
After the art gallery, he wanted to visit the archaeology museum. It cost him a double cappuccino and a lemon muffin.
He wanted to see the bog bodies. Seamus Heaney was inspired by the bog bodies. He said that he was just putting his right leg into his trousers one morning when the first line of his poem, Bogland, came to him. (You never know when inspiration might strike).
I have seen the bog bodies. Once is enough.
"You go, I'll wait," I say.
I text my sister.
"Done the art gallery, done the museum, drew the line at the bog bodies," I text. She is in Denmark and could easily run into a Tollund man.
"Himself is off to look at the bog bodies," I tell her.
"I feel like a bog body," she texts back.
"This is a museum of archaeology and that status extends to the ladies' toilets," I text her.
It felt good to have drunk deep from the cup of culture. I quaffed more in one Saturday with my husband in Dublin than I did in four years as a student in the same city.
Back then, what I quaffed was usually bright green or blue, in a fancy bottle with a name ending in 'o'... even better if you could set it alight.
As we left on Sunday, we talked about the weekend.
"My favourite part was seeing the heron," I say.
"My favourite was seeing the Caravaggio," says he.
We didn't miss Krishnan Guru-Murthy on the telly one bit... well, only a little.
