In 1998, I moved to Portstewart, Northern Ireland, a beautiful seaside town near the Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, and some of the most dramatic scenery in the world.

I moved there for the man who was my fiancé at the time, and because we were young and could not afford to do anything else, I lived with his parents.

To be clear, living with my fiancé’s parents in a small town in Northern Ireland had not been part of my grand romantic plan.

So I made Brendan promise me one thing: We would travel somewhere every single weekend. It did not have to be far or expensive. It could simply be another part of Ireland. But I wanted to see everything.

And we did.

We went to Kilkenny, Kinsale, Cork, Dublin, Malahide, Belfast, Galway, and nearly everywhere in between. I saw ancient castles and tiny villages, drank in more pubs than I could possibly name, and fell completely in love with Ireland.

The engagement did not last, but my love for Ireland did.

For the next six years, I traveled back and forth to visit Brendan’s family, but after 2004, I didn’t return. More than two decades passed.

Then, about six months ago, my family decided it was finally time for us to take a trip to Ireland together. It was something my grandmother had always wanted us to do, but she passed away before we could get our acts together. Or, more accurately, before eight members of the same family could coordinate their schedules and afford a trip to Europe at the same time.

Eventually, we managed both.

There were eight of us: my aunt Mary; my cousins Christine and Sarah; my sister Maureen; her husband, Justin; their two children, Harrison and Zoe, who are my heart and soul; and me.

Because I was one of the designated drivers and do not handle jet lag particularly well, I flew into Shannon the night before everyone else. Driving eight people around Ireland on the left side of the road seemed like something that required at least one full night of sleep.

I checked into No. 1 Pery Square, a beautiful Georgian townhouse hotel in Limerick. The rooms are filled with period furniture and little reminders of the building’s history. It feels elegant, personal, and distinctly Irish. It is the kind of hotel that makes you wonder whether you have accidentally wandered into someone else’s very tasteful life.

When I arrived, the gentleman behind the front desk took his time checking me in. And I mean he really took his time.

As we chatted, a line of three or four people formed behind me. The New Yorker in me noticed immediately. He did not seem concerned. More surprisingly, neither did they.

And then I realized that I wasn’t concerned either.

I was in Ireland. I was on vacation. I had nowhere I needed to be. For once, nobody was acting as if answering an email 90 seconds later might result in the collapse of civilization.

Nothing had happened yet, but I already felt as though I had returned to a place I knew.

At 5 a.m. the next morning, I collected my family from Shannon Airport, and we drove to a house near Killorglin with more bedrooms than we could count and an extraordinary view toward Inch and Dingle Bay.

The following day, we went to Inch Beach, where my brother-in-law and nephew decided to surf. Naturally, I decided to join them.

I would give myself an A for enthusiasm and perhaps a D for execution.

I barely managed to stand up. Surfing in my 50s felt markedly different from surfing in my 20s and 30s. Harrison, meanwhile, stood up almost every time, as if balance, flexibility, and functioning knees were simply his birthright.

Oh, to be young.

Afterward, we went to a local pub and discovered, entirely by accident, that we were in the area where my grandfather’s family had come from. We had not planned a genealogy tour or spent months tracing our roots. We were simply hungry.

Then we sat down and saw a coaster bearing the name Crean. The man pictured on it looked remarkably like my grandfather.

A woman sitting near us overheard our conversation and asked, “Are you all Creans?”

We said yes.

“So am I,” she replied.

There we were, in the part of Ireland where our family began, surrounded by people who shared our name and, in some cases, apparently our faces. We had not gone looking for our history. Somehow, we had simply found our way back to it.

That is the strange thing about nostalgia. Sometimes you seek it out. Sometimes it is waiting for you on a coaster in a pub.

The feeling continued at Slane Castle, where we were incredibly fortunate to stay for three days. I once worked with the whiskey distilled there, which I still believe is one of the best Irish whiskeys, and through that work I became friendly with Alex Conyngham, whose family owns the castle. He was kind enough to let all eight of us stay.

We immediately began behaving as though we were the rightful princes and princesses of Ireland.

Slane is famous for hosting some of the most iconic concerts in Europe, but experiencing it without thousands of people on the lawn was extraordinary. We wandered through the rooms, explored the grounds, and walked along the River Boyne behind the castle. Everywhere you turn, there are centuries of family history and stories embedded in the land.

It was grand and beautiful, but it was also deeply personal. Staying there brought together so many different parts of my life: the Ireland I had known when I was young, the family history that came long before me, and even a chapter of my professional life.

After Slane, we stopped in Malahide for lunch, because I absolutely insisted. Malahide has always been one of my favorite places, and I secretly wished we were staying there. But the family wanted Dublin, so Dublin it was.

The last time I spent any real time in Dublin, I was in my mid-20s and my priorities were somewhat different. Drinking was not merely an activity. It was the primary sport.

We went to Temple Bar, met travelers at The Hairy Lemon, danced at The George, and generally behaved like people who had not yet discovered the restorative power of an early bedtime.

This time, my one real drinking experience was at my friend David Mulligan’s bar, 1661, which regularly appears on lists of the world’s best bars and is an absolute must in Dublin.

David created a 14-cocktail tasting menu for us. It was thoughtful, imaginative, and unlike anything we had experienced. Even more special, his team created a nonalcoholic version for Harrison and Zoe so they could taste alongside us and discuss the different flavors, notes, and layers in each drink.

They later said it was the highlight of their entire trip.

Perhaps my influence as an aunt is not entirely questionable after all.

From the moment I landed, Ireland reminded me of the year I lived there and the six years I spent going back and forth. It reminded me of the adventures I had in my mid-20s, of the person I was then, and of a love I had a very long time ago.

But returning was not only about remembering my old life. It was about watching my family create their own relationship with Ireland. I got to share pieces of my past with them while seeing the country become part of their story too.

The roads and towns looked vaguely familiar. I remembered more than I expected. Even driving on the left side of the road came back surprisingly easily.

It felt less like visiting and more like coming home.

Maybe that is what the best travel does. It does not simply take us somewhere new. Sometimes it returns us to a place, a person, or a version of ourselves we thought we had left behind. It reminds us that those earlier lives do not disappear completely. They travel with us.

Ireland has an extraordinary spirit and an unmistakable soul. It is a country that continues to hold its traditions tightly, but never so tightly that it cannot make room for you.

Whether you are Irish or not, and whether you have visited before or are arriving for the first time, Ireland has a way of feeling familiar.

You land, look around, take a breath, and somehow feel that you have been there before.