Welcome to the Chronicles of a Wayward Drifter
This collection of honest travel stories chronicles my journeys—packed with wild adventures, unexpected mishaps, and real travel tips I learned along the way. Let’s be honest: this isn’t a glossy, sugar-coated version you might find in travel magazines. It’s the raw truth about what it’s really like to explore foreign countries—sometimes hilarious, sometimes humbling, but always worth it.
My goal is to share these tales in a funny, open, and down-to-earth way so you can get the most out of your own travels. You’ll find insights from the road—some hard-earned through costly mistakes, others through pure luck (I’m Irish, after all).
So if you’re searching for an authentic travel blog that tells it like it is, you’re in the right place.
Enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
— The Wayward Drifter
How it All Got Started
It was 2001—just after a 4th of July celebration with friends and neighbors—I sat at home wondering what I was going to do about finding a new job and how I was going to pay the upcoming mortgage. I had recently wrapped up the long and exhausting job of raising my two teenage boys alone, and I felt unsettled and anxious.
Was this all life had for me? I wondered. Is this what freedom feels like—especially on the 4th of July?
I came to a bold conclusion: Hell no! There’s more. A lot more if I just looked for it.
Then I asked myself a very important question—one that many people never think to ask themselves: What do you want to do? That’s when my mind exploded with the realization: I can do anything. Not just what do you want to do, but where do you want to do it?
Over the next few days and weeks, a wild plan began to form—I was going to embark on a journey of travel and self-discovery through Ireland and beyond.
That single question became the spark for a year-long European adventure, visiting more than 60 cities across 15 countries. I checked off bucket-list dreams like drinking a Guinness at St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin, exploring the Highlands of Scotland, riding the Tube in London, and even running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain—on my birthday no less. There were countless more adventures along the way, but I knew deep down this was only the beginning of something really big.
Now fast forward to today, I realized it’s time for the second phase of that great journey to begin.
With all the current political chaos and economic uncertainty in America today, the next question I began asking myself was: Why am I still doing this? To be honest, I'm getting old and I want to enjoy my final years while I still have the chance. I was just treading water to pay the stupid bills I had and that made absolutely no sense to me, I needed a course correction for my life because not only was I getting older, but I was getting grumpy too.
So I sold everything I owned—what I couldn’t sell, I gave to charity. I stuffed everything I could into two large suitcases and a small backpack and set off for Portugal to retire abroad and pick up where I left off—following my dreams as The Wayward Drifter.
