Well. I've just finished 'Harry Potter: Harry Discovers The Angsty Music of The Smiths,' and I have to say that I was not let down. Well, OK, I was a bit disappointed that Rowling killed off the character that was the obvious choice to kill off. I was hoping to be surprised, there, but other than that, I was a happy man at 2am last night, when I finally put the book down after several hours of straight reading.

The end, though, when we realize it was all the daydreams of an autistic boy staring into a snowglobe, well, that just seemed a tad too familiar.

As always with HP, the book made me miss London again. I admit, I've only visited twice, but I love that city so much. Whenever the book mentions King's Cross train station, I always think to myself, a bit too thrilled "I've been there! I bought a coffee and used the bathroom there!" I wonder how many tourists have had pictures of themselves taken between platforms nine and ten.

No matter where in the world I want to go next, London is always in the top five of my considered vacation options. Back in the day, I had a special affinity for the Irish. The first time I went to Ireland was 1998, for St. Patrick's day, no less. Just a year before, a family vacation that involved any more travel than a packed mini van and a road map to the Wisconsin Dells would have been unthinkable. My dad didn't like to go far from home, but he had passed away the previous year.

Putting his life insurance to good use, my mom began her Happy Widow World Tour. First stop: Ireland, the Homeland. And she was bringing along her sons.

It's not that my mom was happy that my dad was gone, mind you. Not at all. She had always wanted to travel, but between a lack of ready money and a husband who was more than happy to spend his vacations swatting golf balls from one end of our backyard to the other, or sitting on the porch he built watching Cubs games on a tiny, 9" black and white TV, she was ready for a bit more. Specifically, she was ready for a trip that didn't involve ten bologna sandwiches in a cooler, three rowdy boys in the backseat of a Dodge Caravan, and a cramped room with two beds and a cot in a budget motel that was selected for it's proximity to the good water slide.

The family trip to Ireland began. Well, I say family, but in truth our ranks were much depleted by the very unfortunate 1997, in which my dad, my mom's mom, and my mom's sister's husband all died within three months of one another. In fact, my mom's mom died while we were on a family vacation in Las Vegas recovering from my dad's death.

The night we found out about grandma, we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Caesar's Palace. Our table was very quiet. I remember looking around at the tacky Hollywood memorabilia, feeling impotent, ridiculous and surreal.

Not good. My family looks back on that year with a mix of bewilderment and a genuine sense of sad amusement on just how bad things were. Six years down the line, we can laugh a bit, joke about how someone must have cursed us, or which one of us could have been next, etc., but at the time it was less than fun, to put it mildly.

So. Our crew was myself, my girlfriend at the time, my mom, her two sisters, and my youngest brother Barry. My brother Bob had elected to stay home. Bob inherited my dad's distaste for traveling far from the homestead, and on top of that was terrified of flying. As the car pulled up to take us to the airport, Bob told us that he loved us all, would miss us, and was very sorry that our plane was going to crash into the ocean.

The dark family sense of humor is especially strong in that one.

Overall, it was a happy trip. The upside to the tragedy of the year before was that my brother and I were traveling with two recently widowed women in their 50's, who had the will to exercise their long repressed senses of mischief, and newly fat purses to boot. Barry and I were happy to find that mom and Aunt June were more than happy to shower us with money, and whether that came from guilt, a real desire to see us happy, or their new found ability to simply flaunt it, we didn't care, as it kept us well afloat in Jameson's whiskey and Guinness.

I was looking forward to several things: It was going to be my first look at a foreign country. I was certain that I was going to discover some deep truth about life that only Europeans knew and kept secret from us Americans. I was looking forward to getting blindly piss drunk with Barry, who had just turned 18, and, my God, I'd bet he was looking forward to legally drinking in Irish pubs, the lucky bastard. At 18, I was crossing my fingers in line at 7-11, fake ID in one hand and a $1.99 six pack of Busch in the other. I was also looking forward to the guarantee of having sex in another country.

On that last point, I must say I was disappointed. I discovered that, world over, hotel rooms are hotel rooms, and the cobblestone streets outside didn't add much to the experience. I feel it is my duty to advise any of those amongst you with upcoming foreign jaunts that they really aren't missing anything, and that they may as well hold off on the carnality until they're back safely stateside.

Ireland was fantastic, and we all fell in love. By day we saw sights and roamed countrysides, exploring castles and old temples and breweries. We spent St. Patrick's day in the city of Cork, my ancestral home, where I ate flaky, pastry sausage rolls incomparable with any I've had since. By night, we did what any close knit family would do, and closed down the nearest pub or hotel bar.

My favorite night of carousing ended with a gigantic bout of inappropriateness perpetrated by my own mother. My brother and I were in our hotel room, fresh from the now closed pub downstairs. As we were getting ready for bed, mom burst into our room, absolutely loaded.

"I'm so drunk!" she yelled, laughing. It was this trip that awakened her love of Guinness.

Barry and I looked on, amazed and amused. We'd never seen her like this.

"Im'a uze your bashroom, June'sh in mine," she slurred, stumbling in. Moments later, we heard a loud thud, as if something had fallen. We rushed into the bathroom together, only to find my mom laying on the floor, laughing uncontrollably as happy tears streamed down her face.

"I missed the toilet!" she yelled.

Her fridge at home has been well stocked with Guinness ever since.

My affinity for Ireland grew, and Barry and I developed a catchphrase to express our appreciation of their culture. Whenever we encountered something distinctly Irish, we let out with a half patronizing, half admiring "Ahhh, the Irish." The patronizing part came from those ridiculous moments, such as the all too common dinners of chicken or fish, served with baked potato, an order of fries, and mashed potatoes. Three servings of potato? "Ahhh, the Irish." The admiring part was performed mostly in the form of toasts, often after a two or three Guinness lunch, or late at night, in our appreciation of a particularly pretty barmaid. Three shots of Jameson's and four or five Guinness's in, live musicians playing the guitar and bodhran off in the corner? "Ahhh, the Irish."

So, we loved Ireland, and Ireland seemed to love us back, happy to have those with Irish blood home again, even as we were doing our best to thin it every night in the pubs.

A few years years later, again with Barry, but without mom this time, we went to London, and then traveled by train through the rest of the UK, even heading up to Scotland. And somehow I fell even deeper in love.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about London. If it comes down to capital cities, maybe it's that London is bigger than Dublin, and more closely resembles what I'm used to in a city. Dublin is charming, and somewhat dark, yet cute, where London is big, slightly dangerous and sexy.

I have flashes, moments of things that make up what I love about London: I love the tube, the buildings, especially Parliament and Westminster Abbey, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and the history of the Tower of London. Regent's Park and Primrose Hill and the short walk to Camden from it. The British Museum and the National Gallery. Shakespeare's Globe. Taking afternoon tea at the Savoy. I love that I connected with the city, and even though my time there has been very limited, I feel I could navigate the center without much help from a street map. I love that I was once stopped and asked for directions, and was able to give them.

I think it may be the people, most of all. I love the ancient old couple I walked by, who were arm in arm, walking through a park, looking as formal and dignified as could be. I love that I threw a pub into a confused frenzy when I asked for onion on my cheeseburger. I loved the ultra-polite beggars. I loved the teenage kids who took Barry and I in, after only talking to them for an hour, when we were stranded in a small town with no place to stay. I loved the two drunken morons we met when the pub we were in closed, and we went out on the street, taking pictures of each other and then alternately shouting "Wankers!" and "Tossers!" as our groups parted and we walked away in different directions. I loved the attempts to entice us into strip clubs in SoHo, and I loved learning to imitate BBC newscasters.

This isn't even going to get into the bars, restaurants, and comedy.

I'm one of those American born, European mutts, with so many ethnicities I need both hands to count them out. As far as I know, I don't have any English blood, though this may change, as my mom likes to spring a new bloodline on me every year or two. Last time it was Lithuanian.

I may not have any English in me, but I definitely have the city of London in me. And I'm glad today that I have my photographs, memories, and good books to remind me of that.