In the summer of 2001, Michael Harling goes on a two-week vacation to Ireland. Here, the future author of Postcards From Across the Pond experiences life in Europe for the first time, and discovers he is ill-suited to the challenge. Along the way he finds himself at odds with the Irish climate, traversing treacherous terrain and in desperate need of a Laundromat. But he is on a mission, a pilgrimage of sorts, to uncover the elusive mystique that is the real Ireland. And while this ideal continues to elude him, he finds the one thing he was determined to avoid.