Apprentice to Samuel Johnson

There was a time I promised myself that I'd ride one of those sightseeing buses visitors take that stop at city landmarks, to try and see how others see San Francisco, but that time has passed and I no longer have the desire.

Having recently returned from a long trip overseas I know how it feels to be a tourist reporting for duty, only to find the new city to be a dense blaze of jackhammers and police sirens, the sidewalks so packed with people that it's possible to conceive of a world where everyone's a tourist.

There I am, sitting in a restaurant in Paris and staring at strange menus, making note how French people my age or a little older eat as if they just lived through World War II, knife in one hand and fork in the other, attacking the steak. These are people who haven't been hungry for years but who still approach the evening meal as if it could be a Last Supper. McDaid's pub in Dublin is much smaller than I remember and just as dependent on its reputation as being a literary pub in 2016 as it was in the distant past, when all Irish writers liked to drink as much or more as they liked to write. There's still no music piped in–a blessing, and a break for the singer Van Morrison whose music is ubiquitous on the island – but there is a bank of televisions' on the north wall where men sit over their pints, watching the horse races in Galway.

If to travel is to see what you haven't already seen, then I'm finished traveling, at least for the time being. This recent trip to France and Ireland may be remembered as the best trip I've ever taken, remembered fondly as the last trip I take before deciding to stay a long while in the city where I now live, and as the trip that made that decision possible.