Adventures in Dundalk, Ireland

Alaska, and a return to blogging...

2009-10-05T02:15:00.010+01:00

flickr photo link: <Alaska, Sep 09>
flickr photo link: <Seattle & LA, Sep 09>
It's been a while now, so thanks to everyone that keeps reading the blog - I know by the stats that people are still reading it... so there you go. We still need to finish loads of stories from 2006-2008, especially our travels in Europe at the end of 08. So maybe one day we'll get back to those. So here we are, blogging "Ohdundalk" from Brisbane, Australia... What the hell, the name has stuck, so we'll keep it. And off we go on our latest trip to Alaska, Sep 09...
Day 1 – Brisbane to LAX, to Seattle
At Brisbane International, we heard those magic words at the check-in, “Good news, you’ve been upgraded to Business Class”... And so it was, we flew non-stop to LAX on our super smooth V Australia 777 with Moet Chandon, a 3 hour meal service, oodles of movie choices on a massive fold out screen and fully flat beds complete with black pyjamas - VERY nice! The only down side of V Australia (being such a young airline) is that they don't the ingredients for a proper bloody mary, and only have OP Bundy... So we gave our feedback. Great doonahs (duvets) though! Customs at LAX was pretty easy as they kept shuffling us from longer to shorter lines. We connected onto Virgin America to Seattle, which was smooth & uneventful. They have a very groovy check-in area with mood lighting and music playing. Got to Seattle (Airport), showered and kipped at the Ramada. Later on we got up and walked around the neighbourhood, past the local cemetery, Mexican restaurant & Subway of course. We found the light rail station and caught a train to downtown Seattle. Got off and walked towards Pike Place. It was dark, pretty cool & windy, with only a few tourists about. We settled on Cutters Bayhouse for dinner. Very nice - loads of crab on the menu (and possibly the most expensive meal on our holiday). Walking back to the station, Ben rang and we met up with him for drinks at a French Bistro on 1st Ave. Snoozed back at the Ramada.
Day 2 – Seattle to Anchorage
Anchorage was smaller, perhaps quieter than expected. After landing with Continental from Seattle (maybe 60% full), we got upgraded into a mammoth Ford Expedition 4WD with Hertz (I ALWAYS seem to get upgraded with Hertz in the USA!) We stayed at the Anchorage Grand Hotel (505 W 2nd Ave), with self contained suites overlooking the railroad yards. We drove over to Fort Kincaid to search for our first wildlife, and Clare soon discovered a pretty tame moose than allowed itself to be patted. Later on we read the ‘nature’ literature that said you should never approach a moose - they're very dangerous and attacked a lot of people each year by kicking them and stomping on them. Well we think the moose in Kincaid Park just wanted snacks, like carrots or similar. Anchorage in early evening was a ghost town. We bought up some souvenirs (the only shops still open in town), and went to a great little Cajun place (Gumbo Shack) for dinner. We couldn’t help but notice the homeless everywhere in downtown Anchorage. The hotel suite was just fine inside, but we hardly slept that night due to the constant and needless train tooting from the station & yards below. Passenger & freight trains to the ‘outside’ (Canada & Lower 48 USA). Take note of those tripadvisor reviews!
Day 3 – Blackstone Bay Sea Kayaking, Whittier
Quite early on Tuesday morning, we got back in the massive 4WD, and left Anchorage for Whittier. At Beluga Point, we saw a small pod of Beluga Whales swimming upstream chasing spawning salmon. We quickly passed Girdwood, for Portage Glacier, and lined up for the single lane tunnel through to Whittier ($12), which opens for 15 minutes in each direction, once an hour. We were soon away with Alaska Sea Kayakers on our excellent trip to Blackstone Bay, possibly our best day trip in Alaska. The clouds were still hanging low but the day was warming up already. We caught a fast charter boat out to Blackstone Bay (about 40 mins) with the other kayakers (3 paying passengers, 1 guide for the day & 2 other guides taking the last trip of the season). The mist was lifting and we saw quite a few sea otters - small groups of them ‘rafted’ together basking on top of the water. They were so cute we forgot to take many pics, but got one of the 2nd group we saw. The boat dropped us and the kayaks off on a stoney beach and we kitted up and got the safety briefing on how to kayak & how to survive an ‘eskimo roll’ and try to minimise the hypothermia (sea kayaking for dummies!) Of course we didn’t need to use this knowledge - the weather was utterly perfect all day. It took us a while to coordinate the 2 sets of paddles - in time - and the steering gears at the back. We visited waterfalls, were followed by harbour seals, floated amongst small ‘icebergs’ and pack ice up to the glaciers. We saw a few bald eagles in the trees at lunch. The lunch was great - a picnic on the grass above a stoney beach with icebergs sitting on it. The small insects did drive us rather mad though. Then a second glacier after lunch - sitting in the pack ice was much colder than at the first one. Clare wasn't as comfortable sitting in the kayak as she had been on the way up - seemed like one of the insects had bitten her on the back and it was driving her mad as she couldn't scratch it. While trying to get to her gloves, she accidentaly dropped her watch into the fjord. Now the sea otters can tell the time! We saw loads of harbour seals and the glaciers up close, with the thunder of cracking sounds but no actual ‘calving’ - which is probably good as you feel really small sitting in a kayak facing the glacier. We paddled off to the third glacier and got off. Joe and the blokes walked up to the touch the ice face. Clare sat on a boulder waiting for a a bear to come down to the creek. But it didn’t some, the bugs came instead and swarmed Clare. The charter boat came back to the beach, and we headed back to Whittier. The guides were departing shortly for Colorado for work in the ski season. So after 9 1/2 hours, we were back at the wharf - what a fantastic trip. We had some dinner at the fish shack and as we got to the hotel (Inn at Whittier), the rain had started.

Day 4 – 26 Glacier Cruise, Whittier, then Cooper Landing

Just pissing down. Low cloud, wind and constant rain. Totally greyness. We slept well and late. We were both exhausted after 9 hrs of paddling the day before. We had plenty of time to potter around with breakfast and then to meander around the village and take pics – waterfalls thundering down from the glacier above Whitter, and the 2 buldings in town. 90% of the town lives in one building- the xxxxx building. Then the other building is abandoned – the Buckner Building. The town was bulit for the US Army in the 1940’s and was isolated from the rest of the state until the 1980’s. The Army built a rail tunnel in the 1940’s but it wasn’t converted to road until 2000 or so. Before the tunnel the only way in as over the glacier or air-very small planes. The railways bought the town off the Army and now it is a major freight station- rail/boat connections.

Got onto the cruise in pouring rain. Saw mist, clouds, rain and wind. I slept a good way up the fjiord. Saw otters and seals around the glaciers. We got right up close to the ice face on 4 glaciers and saw some decent ice packs and proper icebergs. This was also the last cruise of the season and all the crew were going back to Iowa or Idaho for college.

Drove off onto Coopers Landing at the Kenai River. The sun came out and shone onto the autumn leaves in the forest. No more animals, despite looking for moose and bears. Other than the forests the are reminded us strongly of the 12 Bens area of Connermarra in western Ireland.

Found our fishing lodge (Drifters Lodge www.......)- great little cabin overlooking the Kenai River. And then went back to the Kingfisher Lodge for a wonderful dinner and wine.

Day 4 – Fishing, Cooper Landing

Got up early and was kitted up with waders ect and pushed the boat out at Coopers Landing onto the Kenai River and drifted downstream. No motors were allowed only rowing and drifting. We were aiming for Coho ( or silver) salmon and trout. It has rained all night but stopped before we left and didn’t start again until we got back to the cabin.

It was the best days fishing I have ever had. I lost count of how many trout we both caught. And they were huge. We caught both Dolly Varden and Rainbow trout. Joe particularly caught some huge fish. But we couldn’t keep the trout as some were too small, too big and all were gourging on salmon eggs and so were not good eating. We were using flys and drifting the lines downstream the boat floated down as well. Over some white water rapids. Not really that dangerous but fun. We got off the boat 3 times onto banks of side streams to use the ‘spinners’ and try to co-oerse the resting Coho salmon into biting our lines, as we could keep them to eat. They were on the way up to spawn, but they stop eating when they hit the freshwater and then have to travel upstream for 85 miles to spawn and then die. So we saw loads of red Sockeye salmon spawning and dying all along the river. Even caught a couple. Didn’t get a Coho landed though. Saw more bald eagles including one with a salmon in its feet flying over us and many seagulls of all sizes eating the rotting stinking salmon carcases on the banks and sandbars. The forests were in full colours but we saw no bears. People were telling us about the bears they saw yesterday, swimming across the river an hour before ect ect ...

Great day. Great fishing, great accomadation and dining. Even got to the laundry to do a spot of washing before dinner. The guides here said they would stay till the end of the trout season- early Oct- and were off to Hawaii to bar-tend for winter.

Day 5 – Cooper Landing to Seward, MS Ryndam.

Had breakfast over the river watching the mist and clouds rise above the forest. Slowly drove to Seward stopping for more mist and cloud pics and hoping for bears detours- Bear Creek, Bear Crossing and Bear River. But no bears at all. Did another glacier visit- Exit Glacier. This glacier is melting really fast. Walked up to the face- but not allowed to touch it. More alledged bears in the woods. Did see the faeces piles proving not all bears shit in the woods- some shit next to the berry bush on the glacier walk.

Drove onto Seward and returned the giant 4wd after visitng the local supermarket for some smoked salmon and chips for lunch. Board the ship and dumped all the luggage and caught the bus back down to town and visited the Sea Life Centre- aquariams for birds, mammals and fish. But no otters at the moment. Joe missed the life boat drill and then I slept for a while while Joe explored the boat and saw some otters playing next to the boat as we left. Went off for a Clive Owen movie after dinner.

Day 6 – Hubbard Glacier

Were at sea all day. I spoilt myself and had a massage after a late breakfast and a kitchen tour. Joe went to the gym and walked the decks. In the mid afternoon we arrived at the Hubbard Glacier. You might think that we had already seen a lot of Alaskan glaciers and maybe had had enough. No, each is different. This one was just huge. This time we saw some decent calvings- where the ice chunks fall off and make a big splash. I spent the time to get the exposure right and used all lenses. Even got some decent pics of seals on icebergs. Saw loads of them floating about. Did get cold though in the rain.

Some facts and figures about this glacier:
This is the largest tidewater glacier in Nth America- 76 miles long. This is one of the only glaciers that is growing not shrinking. Soon it might close the sea entrance to Russel Fjord and will create a dam and stop access to a fishing village and trap any salmon, seals and whales in the damn.

That night we had dinner in the formal resturant and had 3 courses of lobster dishes. The ship has some great Oregon and Washington State Pinot Noirs and Merlots. Then off to the latest Russel Crowe movie.

Between the flight over and the ship I have really caught up with some of the latest movies and hope to see a few more on the way back- especially the Aussie ones- Bilboa for sure. Saw ‘Sampson and Deliah’ on Virgen. That was confronting. Takes an effort to get thru as it is almost totally in an Aboriginal language and the story is so confronting. Just can’t see what the solution is to the town camps and outstation problems in central Australia.

Day 7 – Sitka

It’s a dark & dreary afternoon in Sitka, Alaska. The Phillipino Barmen are mixing 2 for 1 margaritas for the Happy Hour in the Crows Nest, as the MS Ryndam slowly spins in the harbour before heading out to sea. Our first few days in Alaska saw brilliant weather, but things are turning towards winter now... Sitka is on an island and cut off from the rest of the country except by boat. It was settled by the Russians in 1804 and was the Russian capital of Alaska before they sold it to the Americans in 1867. It continued to be the American Alaskan capital until 1913 when it was moved to Junea.

Wandered about town. Ended up in the bookstore as usual and bought a few interesting items for Xmas gifts. I went up to the old Russian cemetery and Block house (wooden fort) and then thru the back streets back to the Russian Orthodox church (St Michael’s 1848) to see the icons ect. Then met up with Joe to do a tour thru the Russian Bishops House. It was built in 1842 and and is fully restored with wallpaper, furniture and even a chapel full of icons. The building is a Russian style 2 story log cabin that is one of 4 surviving Russian colonial buildings in North America. It really shows the high standards of the Czars representive in Nth America. Opulent - is the only word possible to describe it all. Fully heated with doubleglazed windows and fine china to eat off.

Actually met a real live Alaskan who was not moving off for the winter but living full time in Sitka. The young lady at the Russian house who had a Norwegian great grandfather who came to Alaska and married a Tlingit (local Indian tribe) wife and her grandmother could speak Tlingit. Miserable weather. The marina was full of fishing boats.

Day 8 – White Pass, Skagway

Train trip up the hills along the gold rush route to Dawson- Klondike rush in 1897/1898 which was the richest gold strike in history by the end of it. Waterfalls, gorges with white water pools, forests of Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, Birch, Pine and Cottonwoods all the way up the train tracks that were built in 1898. We stopped at the Canadian border which was bleak and around 0C with very low cloud. And back down to town where I got off and ended up in the book store again and couldn’t be bothered to wait for 2 hours till the last tour of the Red Onion Saloon- gold rush brothel.

Saw 3 otters in the marina- full of yatchs, not fishing boats. A real tourist town but with a feel of a Northern Byron minus the beaches. Very hippyish. Most people were lierally packing their 4wds and loading up the skis and kayaks to head ‘outside’. A few were staying and couldn’t wait for the last boat to leave town. There is one road out to Whitehorse where the nearest, doctor, dentist and Walmart is.

Day 9 – Whale Watching & Dogs, Juneau

Junea is the Alaskan capital-just can’t see why myself. It was one the original gold rush towns – founded in 1880. Previous to this, of course, it was a Tlinget settlement.

Okay another wet cold day. My kayak trip was cancelled due to lack of interest and so Joe and I head off to a whale tour. Well Joe just couldn’t get into it- Hervey Bay apprently just pisses on the whales up here. Did see quite a few Humpbacks but they are just feeding themsleves up for the journey south and just popped up and down and don’t leap about or come up to the boat. More Bald eagles, Harbour seals and Stellar Sea Lions.

Then a quick lunch at the Red Dog Saloon and ready for our ‘dog tour’. We drove over to Douglas Island into the very wet rain forest. Aptyly named. The sled dogs were not Huskies as we were expecting. In fact, most looked like a motley mix of cross bred red cattle dogs, kelpies and dingos with a touch of greyhound. But still they could howl and run like the wind. A team of dogs sped our sled of 7 people around the muddy trails of the rainforest at a great speed and seemed to love it. There was 162 dogs in teams under a summer training regime preparing for the winter races including the Itarod race. Once again even the dogs were moving out for the winter season. But they were moving north to really get into the next level of training.

Day 10 – Bears by floatplane, Ketchikan

Utterly pouring rain and low clouds. We even thought we wouldn’t get off the ground here. But this trip had cost quite a bit and didn’t guarantee a bear. Hmmmm

Off we went and had a drive by tour of the town. Totally Alaskan as you imagine it. All wooden houses on stilts up a hill connected by board walks, full of forests with low clouds and fishing boats at the end of the street. Another town on an island, with no roads out. Just boats and float planes. Settled in 1887 as a salmon fishing town not a gold town.

Flew off to Neets Bay, which is actually on Revillagigedo Island near Misty Fjords National Monument. Certainly well named. The reason the bears come to Neets bay is to feast on the salmon, along with the harbour seals and Stellar Sea Lions and many species of birds. The salmon come here to spawn but don’t actually get to do that, as they herd themselves into races that takes them straight to the hatchery building. So their eggs and sperm are harvested by humans and then hatched and grown until they are big enough to be realeased into the sea again. So unlike salmon hatcheries I have seen in a number of countries the small salmon are not sent to a farm and fed in sea cages. They go out to sea as free salmon and swim around getting fat for 4 years and then swim back to Neets Bay. In the mean time fishing people, bears, eagles, sharks ect can catch them. About 15% of those released will actually swim back. Okay enough about salmon- I just can’t help myself.

This trip was about the bears and only the bears, despite the proximity of huge Stellar Sea lions flopping so close to shore. Yes we saw the bears- Black bears. First a Mother and baby, who ran up a tree with a salmon. Then a couple of small bears wandering around in and out of the forest and then sitting eating a dead salmon. Then a small bear called ‘Scrapy’ who literally ran past us and then stopped and looked up and saw us all a few meters away. So at this point despite all these bears, we had not one decent photo. The rain fall at Neets Bay is just massive and so the rain forest is just that, wet, wet and a bit more rain and dark. We had all of our wet weather gear on from Ireland.

Then as we were wandering back to the wharf where the sea plane was, a big male bear looking for a live salmon to catch literally crossed the path in front of us. We kept walking until we could stop and see him clearly- and get a decent photo out of the gloom of the forest. And he caught his salmon and then sat down and munched away completly ignoring us. 54 photos later I had a couple of decent pics of the bear ripping up his salmon with blood on his mouth.

All in all bloody brilliant.

Day 11 – Day at sea

Calm and clear today. So different from the past week of ‘Irish’ weather. We seem to be at sea-beyond the inside passage now.

Its Five O clock somewhere- yes here for happy hour- half price Pina Coladas.

Day 12 – Vancouver to Seattle
Perfect clear sunny day and warm. All packed up and very efficiently despatched off the Ryndam and onto the bus down to Seattle cross the border.

Okay at this point we have an unexpected detour, where I get a text message from work and after a few ph calls find that I will be working in and around Washington state for the next 2 weeks. So we spend the glorious sunny and warm weekend in Seattle and on Sunday Joe heads off to do yet another Disney Park- LA this time and I drive south to the Columbia River Gorge.

PS From Joe: God bless business class upgrades!
So last night, the flight was 100% full. The business class crew were really amazing – it was a slightly different experience again from our trip over. So we all got Bulgari personal packs (see, they DO have them!), and they gave out the black pyjamas to everyone and some people even changed before we took off! I had dinner and watched most of the Boat Rocking movie, then they made up my bed, then I woke up about 4 hours outside Brisbane – I think I slept for at least 6-7 hours, solidly… and the flight was 13 hours 10 mins! At one point last night (before I slept), I actually sat there looking at the purple lights thinking how unbelievable it all was – I had to pinch myself to make sure it was really happening. Amazing.

Post Seattle work trip:

Joe got back to Brisbane today. He was upgraded to business class trip as we both were on the way over. Betcha I end up in cattle class when I fly back. He has a CD of the best of our pics but the rest are on my laptop here. I will be back on Oct 13.
I am doing audits on apple and pear pack sheds. The pack sheds here are pretty amazing especially compared to Bundaberg ect I did one at Hood River town, right on the Columbia River, in the gorge.
I drove along the Columbia River in a huge gorge this morning and then turned into the mountains thru Indian reservations- all forests and hills- totally fire area. Just can’t understand why anyone would build houses there- doomed to burn. Then thru dry hills and plains just like Wyoming and then out into the Yakima Valley.
Snow all over Mt Hood today- 6000 ft mountain above the town I was staying in- Hood River. Weekend forecast is snow at 4500 ft and above- so 1500 m. Think that might be around here somehow.
Well in Yakima I have seen not just the usual small wooden houses, trailer park houses but also shanty towns !!!!!! There are small ‘cubby’ houses in peoples yards and spare yards. The small wooden houses in town are actually smaller than trailer houses at the edge of town. The whole Valley is just fruit farms and packing sheds. Trucks driving everywhere with bins of fruit on the back. In one town I had to stop on the hway when a bloke in a large mower drove across with mini trolleys of capsicums behind him. The town is very dry. I can smell bushfires but can’t see any smoke. I went across the road to the ‘well to do’ shopping centre for lunch and there was a bloke in the sandwich shop talking about a ph call at 4am about a raging fire near to town. I think he was a fire dept type but maybe not an actual fireman.
And the big show in town this week is the Fair- mini Ecka- and Rodeo on Friday night. I will go and get some clichéd pics, if I am not driving back to Hood River to meet up with Ben. I will have to check on the Mt Rainer arts festival re the snow level expected.
After turning off the hway into town it took me a while to find my hotel I drove around looking at all of the houses and shanties and then past the Fair. And when I found my hotel I thought – good, nice part of town- but after walking across the road to the shopping centre I realized that only the Target (large), nail shop, cut price hairdresser and local (not Subway) sub shop and small pizza hut was still open. The rest were shut up. Yeah and the bloody trains are around here again. Heard the tooting this arvo. Can’t actually see them though. Not sure if any part of this town is ‘good’.
It’s all a world away from Seattle and I am here for almost a week now.
I have bought the Pogues tickets for Sat.
Ate at Olive Garden tonight- so pretending to be ‘real’ Italian. All huge servings. I sent the salad that I didn’t know came with my order back- a giant bowl. But they did have a frozen limencello cocktail. Very very good. The options look bleak for the next week- Maccas, BK, Mexican and deep fried Fair Food. Vets (army people not animal doctors) and their families get in free to the Fair tonight. Big crowd down there.

Day 11 - San Sebastian, Pension Alemana

2008-12-02T20:18:00.012Z

Click on the 2 mosaics for a slightly larger picture...

From top, left to right...

1. Graffiti, Salamanca
2. Le Petit Hotel, Salamanca
3. Motorway Driving
4. Motorway Driving, Northern Spain
5. Motorway Snow
6. Motorway Snow
7. Pension Alemana, San Sebastian (very nice little hotel)
8. Pension Alemana, San Sebastian

flickr photo link: <Spain, Dec 08>

They say that San Sebastian has the best tapas in Spain, and tonight we tried quite a few of them! Various tapas with smoked salmon & cream cheese, mini croissants with jamón & fromage, tapas with roquefort cheese & quince paste (and a walnut on top), salt cod, mini tarts with olive oil & glass eels, and grilled prawns, to name a few. Plus a couple of the local beers and a Havana Club & Coke for Clare. They do NOT use nip pourers here, so spirits are high.
Today was spent mainly driving, from Salamanda to San Sebastian past Valladolid, Burgos & Vitoria. We left around 10am and it took about 6 hours, starting in Wild West or Wyoming like open country, then through loads of snow covered areas with mountains & tunnels. They're raving about the snow on the news. The Swiss just get on with things when it snows, but the Spanish get stuck in centimetres, like the British, so things get rather excited. There was one motorway pass that looked to be getting rather hairy, but we cleared it, and were soon descending through some very green but quite industrial valleys in the Basque Country, into San Sebastian. I should point out that the motorways here are pretty exceptional too.
The Garmin lady helped us find our hotel, Pension Alemana (recommended by the Lonely Planet), which is rather comfortable, right near the esplanade, and has internet access, thus the update tonight! Tomorrow, we'll explore San Sebastian further then mosey along the coast to Bilbao...

Day 6 - Parallel Worlds

2008-11-27T21:32:00.004Z

Tonight we're staying at the Formule 1 Genève Aéroport Ferney Voltaire, which is actually in France, not Switzerland. Like most Formule 1's, this is 100% low rent - Clare says even on the scale of Formule 1's this is especially low rent, as she's never had to share the bathroom with prostitutes before. Yes, this is the sort of place where you just come to rest your head, and if you see crime scene tape outside a room, you just walk past quickly - you see nothing, hear nothing. More on that later. We'd started the day with breakfast at our lovely hotel in Zermatt, before checking out, taking the train back down the valley to Täsch with a load of noisy kids, then driving west along the Valais (the central Rhône Valley in Switzerland). The temperatures in the valley hit -7c along the way, so we didn't stop much except to take a few photos, then to pick up some snacks at the Migros "MMM" Supermarket at Aigle/Chablais Centre. Migros Supermarkets come in 3 sizes - M, MM & MMM, so this was one of the big ones! It had the most incredible setting on the valley floor between the Chablais & Bernese Alps. Then we drove along the attractive southern shore of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva), over the French border, via Évian-les-Bains, back over the Swiss Border, into Geneva past all the expensive design houses, shops & banks, past the United Nations and WTO, etc, etc. Finally past the airport and back over the French border again to this 'less than salubrious' location on the edge of respectability in Geneva!
Somewhere, deep below our location right here are the tunnels of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, where they hope to recreate the big bang. Along the street here, we went to the Buffalo Grill, first observed in Lausanne Crissier (on the first day of our trip), and something akin to the Lonestar Steakhouse in Australia. Not bad, but not brilliant either. We shouldn't have expected much from a cocktail that was only 2 Euros more than a Coke... And back here at the F1, this other business is being conducted... which brings us to the subject of parallel worlds, and how these worlds might intersect or even collide at some stage, when the scientists, far below ground, come up for a steak, or engage in some other business here at the F1. Yes, parallel worlds exist here...
In the early hours of Friday morning, we fly to Portugal...

Day 5 – Zermatt, Hotel Mirabeau, alpine residence, wellness & spa

2008-11-26T23:51:00.000Z

Today was pretty slothful. Clare had a massage and read the Guardian. I took a train ride up to Gornergrat for even better views of the Matterhorn. Staff were buzzing around preparing the ski slopes for the season opening that coming weekend. We used the spa in the late afternoon, although I couldn’t stand the steam room for more than a couple of minutes, and you won’t get me in the sauna. Still, it was fun. We had a rum & coke at the bar before dinner. Colonel Mustard was there again, with his waxed moustache, and his well groomed wife dripping with jewellery. We guessed they were German. Sepp Julen was schmoozing with a French group before dinner and all was good with the world (well, in Zermatt anyway). Clare got 2 chocolates on her pillow. Zzz...

Day 4 – Zermatt, Hotel Mirabeau, alpine residence, wellness & spa

2008-11-25T23:35:00.000Z

The Swiss do amazing tunnels, and bridges, and trains, etc, etc. Some of the tunnels were being done around 1890, before WW1, in times of global mass migration. Yes, the Swiss were having a jolly good time opening up their health resorts, and making fondue, while many places on our planet were quite inhospitable. Today we took the Lötschbergtunnel from Kandersteg to Goppenstein (towards Zermatt). This was a drive-on, drive-off car tunnel that took about 20 minutes. You sit in your car, and plunge into darkness at high speed which is quite disconcerting at first, but moves you under the Alps with incredible efficiency. Of course now, they’ve recently completed another tunnel (the Lötschberg-Basistunnel), right under the Lötschbergtunnel, which is even longer and even more efficient. How very Swiss.
Zermatt is a car free town, so you park your car at Täsch, just down the valley, and take a shuttle train up. You can even park your trolley full of luggage on the train. Again, incredibly efficient. Something about all this efficiency reminded me of Disneyland – I get the feeling Walt modelled the whole thing on Switzerland!
Now, the "Hotel Mirabeau, alpine residence, wellness & spa". Quite a mouthful that. This was the biggest treat on this “End of Europe” fling. I’d booked a package with room, breakfast, dinner and spa treatments included. This was the sort of place where there were slippers & robes in the cupboard, lovely white doonahs, a well stocked mini-bar and a full view of the Matterhorn. Even candles in the bathroom. They call themselves 4 star, but I might even call it 5. Clare had a facial in the spa while I took some snaps of the Matterhorn. The dinner was 5 course – rather superb. The hotel owner, Sepp Julen came to our table to ask how things were, which was a nice touch. When we returned to our room our bed had been turned down with chocolates on the pillows. Zermatt twinkled like a fairy tale town under a blanket of thick snow. Nice...

Day 3 – Interlaken, Chalet Swiss Hotel

2008-11-24T23:05:00.001Z

The snow was pretty thick and still falling in the morning as we made our way to the train station for our trip to the Jungfraujoch (Top of Europe). I’d done this journey twice before (in the late 80’s), so there was a sense of nostalgia I suppose. The front desk clerk at our hotel thought we were mad with the snowy conditions and tried to warn me off, but there was no use wasting the day. You take 3 trains to the top. The valleys were pure Ansell Adams pictures with cloud hanging over grey snow-laden trees and sheer rock walls. At the top, we ventured out into the snow. It was -17.5c. We felt like polar explorers. Then we went inside… quickly! We took a picnic lunch of bread, cheese & salami to save money. If we’d ever thought Ireland was expensive, it ain’t got nothin’ on Switzerland. We came back via Grindelwald where kids were people were snowblowing driveways and kids were playing with toboggans. Darkness was falling and the snow was turning slushy as our train pulled back into Interlaken...

Day 2 – Interlaken, Chalet Swiss Hotel

2008-11-23T22:57:00.000Z

After Clare slept for 12 hours, we got back on the road. We stopped for some breakfast in Montreux, where I used my limited French skills to order some coffee and sandwiches, although pointing to the delicious cakes in the little patisserie was easier by far. Montreux has a faded charm that speaks of Arab money and bad 1970’s architecture mixed in with grand old palace hotels. Nothing special really. The snow was falling heavily as we headed out towards Interlaken. The mountain road via Les Mosses had been freshly ploughed, but the snow got thicker as we rose in altitude – lucky our car had snow tyres fitted. We stopped at a small village to buy some cheese and lunch stuff, while Clare spotted some huskies going back into their trailer after a morning of mushing.
The Chalet Swiss Hotel in Interlaken gave us our first taste of many hotels on this trip – almost completely empty at this time of year. Some might call us mad, but you get the pick of rooms! As per the weather forecast, the snow was falling very heavily (but silently) in the evening as we went for pizza and rosti at a strange little restaurant adorned in Marilyn Monroe paraphernalia. We had to tread really carefully, but it was quite magical. Won’t get many nights like this in Brisbane...

Day 1 - We've left the Green Isle!

2008-11-22T22:45:00.003Z

We left Ireland today. At first light, this seemed unlikely considering the amount of luggage we still had in our possession (even after sending our cargo shipment). But Aer Lingus were considerate, and we made it through ok... We got the bond deposit back from our landlord in Annagassan - we'd cleaned it up pretty nicely and everything was perfect. We definitely had some mixed feelings as we drove out of Annagassan for the last time, but we knew this day would come. At some stage, we'll do a Top 10 (Good AND Bad!) of living in Ireland. We'd known all along that Annagassan was the best thing about Ireland. Well, for us anyway. So we were sad to leave.
There were some snowflakes as we landed in Geneva - quite exciting. Our rental car from Alamo/National was a great little Renault Clio hatchback/station wagon - really great for an "economy" car rental as we always do. Drove to Lausanne and stayed at the Ibis Crissier, located near motorways, but the Garmin lady guided us without too much fuss or driving into lakes, etc. You always know what you're gonna get with Ibis - not too nasty and not too posh either - something in-between, and this was no different. We took a walk around the old town and had an early dinner. The snow was coming down quite heavily as we drove back to the Ibis and zzz...

Goodbye Annagassan

2008-11-13T16:11:00.003Z

...FAREWELL PARTY...

SATURDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2008

THE GLYDE INN, ANNAGASSAN, CO LOUTH, IRELAND

FROM ABOUT 9PM

MUSIC FROM CATHAL AND THE GROUP

Über Dusseldorf

2008-11-13T11:16:00.017Z

NOW I know where Jerry Springer got his tv studio set from :)
Landschaftspark, Duisburg-Nord, Rhineland.
Post-industrial, apocalyptic Disneyland, without the rides. Or the cheesy grins.

flickr photo link: <Dusseldorf, 08-09 Nov 08>
08 Nov 08 FR2177 DUB/NRN 0915/1200
10 Nov 08 FR2176 NRN/DUB 0700/0745
As far as I can remember, I've never driven a Mini Cooper before. Especially not the new Mini Cooper, now lovingly crafted by BMW but faithful to the original British designs including the huge round dashboard instruments, etc. The boot is still tiny, but the Mini goes very fast on the Autobahn, although I was too gutless to take it much beyond 140kph. Especially when overtaking trucks full of chemicals as we headed south through the industrial Ruhr/North Rhine area towards Dusseldorf. Damn, it even has a 6 speed gearbox! The Garmin lady was onboard too, telling us to "exit left and stay left", or even "exit left, keep left and turn right"... Huh? She was also of no help when a small deer darted across the road near the airport, with shooters in hi-vis jackets in hot pursuit. Maybe that deer lived another day. And on Monday morning, Clare seemed almost willing to follow the Garmin lady into a 4 lane section of one way Autobahn traffic, the wrong way. Lucky I was driving :)
So we had a quick weekend in Germany to see our friends Gerald & Sandra, before we leave Europe (we'll have to call this "Clare & Joe's Farewell Europe Tour 2008"). Faultless & UBER CHEAP flights from Dublin to Dusseldorf-Weeze with Ryanair, Mini Cooper from Sixt Rentals, Uber German design at every turn, and of course brillliant food. Dusseldorf is a great city - smart & stylish, incredibly liveable, reasonably priced in many respects, nice places to walk & visit, and in the heart of Europe. On Saturday afternoon we checked out Landschaftspark, Duisberg-Nord - 200 hectares of industrial wasteland (ex chemical plant, glassworks, ironworks, etc.) We have some photos on flickr, and will add more when we get time. The Ruhr area is still dotted with massive industrial plants and smokestacks, both abandoned and active. Pretty amazing landscape. Back into town for the evening - a few local "Alt" beers in the very lively "Altstadt" (old town) and excellent food. Great cocktail bars. All far, far cheaper than Ireland of course. Dusseldorf is definitely a party town.
Had a great German breakfast on Sunday - bread rolls, meats & cheeses (definitely Clare's favourite), then checked out the "Media Harbour" area of renovated Rhine docklands - very funky architecture & design stores with €12,000 black & white leather chairs. Go wild! Yeah, right... New apartments & hotels are still going up here. Not sure when then slowdown will hit. Apart from the incredible interior design of Gerald & Sandra's apartment (think lots of glass & steel) and our Mini Cooper, our favourite design fitting of the weekend was the "Campari Light" in our little hotel room in Gerald & Sandra's apartment building. Very nice. Possibly Italian. But we're sure this could be easily recreated with a little imagination. Sounds like a challenge!

We were up again in the wee hours of Monday morning. Flew back to Dublin, temperature 5c, and straight into the M50 Motorway traffic for my last few days of work. Next report after our leaving party this weekend...

Orlando, Dingle & Other Stories

2008-10-27T19:02:00.005Z

It's time for a bit of blogging. There is much to tell...
I went across to Orlando at the beginning of October for the shortest ever, carbon burning, crazy miles for crazy cheap prices trip to my favourite ever Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. And if you want to ask me about the Dublin-Gatwick-Detroit-Orlando-Atlanta-Gatwick-Dublin flights, I'll tell you it was all worth it, even though the outbound journey took me almost 24 hours. From Thursday to Tuesday, not only did I fit in 2 nights at Halloween Horror Nights #18, but also a great night at "Howl-O-Scream" at Busch Gardens Tampa, an airboat trip in the Everglades, some factory outlet shoe shopping, and some lie-in time at the Doubletree Hotel Universal Studios, where they present you with a warm chocolate cookie at check-in time. My "economy" car rental was upgraded to a thumping red Ford Mustang, as per usual. That's what you get when they're asleep on the Hertz counter at 1am, on a typically steamy Orlando night (a taste of Brisbane in summer!) The scares were as good as ever, and so was Orlando, although they're hurting of course. For just 25 cents more you can supersize everything at Burger King, and for just a dollar more, they'll throw in a lakefront repo-home 5 miles from Disneyworld. There are bus tours daily - bring the cheque book (or the credit card!) I got 3 seats back on Delta from Atlanta to Gatwick, although I was sure the trolley dollies with the "Designing Women" southern drawl seemed determined to lock up the screaming kid in front of me as we crossed the coast of Canada :) Anyway, might not get back to Orlando for a few years now...
We're leaving Ireland quite soon. Nothing to do with the world financial disaster, but just an overall assessment that although there's a lot to love about Ireland, life in Australia is better. As well as the attraction of family & friends of course. We will miss Ireland, especially on those occasional horrible days when Brisbane peaks at 40c. We'll really miss the music, and our wonderful Viking Festival too. But it's time to go back now - to sort out our real estate and see if we can find ourselves a house and do some more fun things. We've both resigned, and are in our final weeks of work here.
What this also means is that by the end of this year, ohdundalk will come to an end too. I think blogging needs to have a specific purpose - and ohdundalk doesn't really work in the suburbs of Brisbane. Perhaps we'll eventually have another blog with a new purpose, but until then, this blog will end (after we tidy up all the loose ends and put up ALL the photos) - and will serve as a record of our experiences from 2006 until the end of 2008. We have loads and loads of media to sort out from this time, both word (written & yet unwritten) and photos. I have a book to finish, and I hope a couple of shots might even end up on our walls next year!
So we leave Ireland in late November - one last big bang party at The Glyde Inn (last drinks please), then over to Switzerland for 6 nights including Interlaken & Zermatt. A little nostalgia from my 1989 travel agent days! Then across to Porto and down to Steve & Meg in the hills of Portugal, then up to San Sebastian, Bilbao, Northern Spain & Galicia. Eventually back to London, then Qantas back to OZ on the pre-Christmas frequent flyer special - oxygen masks frequently dropping via Singapore & Melbourne. We have some plans - just a few, and we'll take things as they come in this mad world.
Finally, but by no means last - we just got back from a weekend in Dingle with Dave, Libby & Zach. I suppose there was a touch of melancholy as with Dingle, we felt like we'd left the best of Ireland till last. Absolutely spectacular, especially the end of the peninsula overlooking Great Blasket. Of course it rained for a whole day. Not just rain but movie special effects rain, blasting in all directions driven by the turbine of Atlantic winds. Dingle was rugged, amazing and geared up for tourism - good food, scenery, music, Guinness (in no particular order). However, we will say, directly from the mouths of our Australian visitors that prices in Ireland are now officially "horrifying" with the drop of the Aussie Dollar and the amazing strength of the Euro (what does the world see in the Euro?) This has made an average B&B room over A$120, a tank of fuel well over A$100, a simple meal over A$80. Currencies will fluctuate of course, and the Aussie will come back, but right now, all we can do is to issue a pretty big warning to all imminent & potential visitors. Get ready to open your wallet, and if you choose to convert, please don't be of a nervous disposition! Yikes...
Loads of photos will be posted soon, and we might even expand on these stories a little more.

Southwest Ireland

2008-09-22T10:45:00.006+01:00

Hi all,
Clare and her mum are back from their big trip round Southwest Ireland, so here are some photo updates:
flickr photo link: <Ring of Kerry, Sep 08>
flickr photo link: <Ring of Beara, Sep 08>
flickr photo link: <Sheep's Head & Mizen Head, Sep 08>
flickr photo link: <Cashel & St Kevins, Sep 08>
Enjoy. Bye.

Irish Pub of the Week #15

2008-09-18T22:46:00.000+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #15, "The Lobster" on the esplanade at Waterville, right at the end of the Ring of Kerry. We didn't have a pint here, but the sight of the giant plastic lobster clutching the creamy guinness caught my eye, so we had to stop for a quick snap. I trust they might do some good seafood here. Rock Lobster...

The Ring of Kerry

2008-09-17T21:46:00.007+01:00

flickr photo link: <Ring of Kerry, Sep 08>
The view from the road that runs along the ridge of Valentia Island must be quite good. So too, the view from the cliff walk, leading from the car park beside the craft shop where they sell the Skellig Chocolates. The view from the slate mine with the "Mary" grotto must also be great, perched high above the Atlantic. Yes, it must be quite a view. Possibly spectacular. But here on Valentia Island, along with everywhere else at this end of the famous Ring Of Kerry, we saw nothing. Nothing that is, but cloud, fog, mist & rain - in no specific order. I think the travelling preacher who ran the Old Schoolhouse B&B at Ballinskelligs summed it all up when he said they'd had one dry day in nine weeks, yes, that's 1 dry day in 9 weeks. Mmm. So between full Irish breakfasts outside Killarney & Ballinskelligs, then (Joe) making the 6.30pm Sunday train from Cork to Dublin, we saw lots & lots of rain:
pouring rain in Killarney while Clare searched for the "official" tourist office (and I parked on double yellow lines, but the Garda still ignored me);
easing rain as we drove around Caragh Lake (one of the most attractive parts of the Ring of Kerry we actually saw!);
light rain as Clare ran into the Centra at Cahersiveen seeking the free Bonnie Tyler CD from the Irish Daily Mail (the poor girl had no idea who Bonnie Tyler was);
increasing rain as we took the car ferry to Valentia Island before a complete whiteout descended upon us;
light rain (and fog), but who cares about the weather, as we tasted the Skelligs Chocolates with the other Aussies at the weenie little factory at St. Finian's Bay (mighty good!)
variable fog, cloud & showers most of the following day - Mary statue in the cloud; cyclists racing in the cloud; lush forests with dripping rain...
Clare and her mum have gone on to other parts south/southwest this week (and apparently the weather has significantly improved), while I returned to Dublin on the train and it rained ALL the way across Ireland... The train had dark blue reflective/frosted windows, but every now and then you could see the drips pouring down, and people standing at crossings and stations with umbrellas, as we flew past. And in Dublin - absolutely pouring; vast sheets of wet blasted at a sharp angle like special effects for Noah's Ark The Movie. More reports next week.

Lost in Carrickmacross

2008-09-09T20:39:00.007+01:00

Mannan Castle required a lot of imagination. Perched on a hill above a golf course in Monaghan, it was nothing but a bunch of rocks, loosely scattered and smothered in vegetation, and some big ditches. More like Pan's Labyrinth than King Arthur. I half expected a stick insect to land on Clare and start making strange clicking sounds. Either that or a watery tart lobbing a scimitar at us from the "deep pool", the sight of which our guide tempted us with, but we never actually laid our eyes on. And me, I ripped my jeans on the barbed wire strategically placed at the entry gate. Yes, the golf course didn't seem too keen on welcoming visitors up here, but the 'clahs' (County Louth Archaeological And Historical Society) were a hardy bunch (of mainly pensioners) and we'd joined them on this Sunday afternoon of discovery around Carrickmacross.
Clare had tempted me earlier with "Do you want to go and see a workhouse?", to which I foolishly replied yes. Ooh, a spooky old workhouse... "Please Sir, can I have some more?..." and all that good old stuff. Little did I know that I would also have to: survey the stained glass windows at St. Josephs (2.30pm); check out the ruins of the local graveyard whilst listening to stories of haunting the local drunks (4.00pm); climb the hill to the forementioned Mannon Castle (5.30pm); then join the convoy of pensioners pulled up on the N2 as traffic raced past - but they had the sense to wait for someone to lead the way while Clare and I blasted ahead, and promptly got lost in Carrickmacross.
All the chocolate digestives had been snapped up when we finally made it to the workhouse around 7.30pm. The pensioners were already seated with their cups of tea while we watched a powerpoint presentation about the famine and all things history related. Of course the afternoon wasn't really supposed to go on this long, but the enthusiasm of this little historical society stretched things out rather. The workhouse wasn't at all spooky in the end, but rather a complete renovation job funded by the crossborder peace initiative. After the sobering stories of the famine and mass migration, Clare and I rushed back to The Lisdoo in Dundalk for some substenance in the form of beef & guinness pies, which they do rather nicely. Yes, things have certainly changed in Ireland.

Mrs Todd's Shortcut

2008-08-27T22:29:00.011+01:00

Back Road (Paul Grecian Photography)

Hell, it ain't one of ours, but this photo just fits the story!

So, my office has finally moved now - from Clonskeagh in Southern Dublin, to the green fields of Leixlip in Western Dublin. We're now on a "campus" - perhaps a term loosely used in this case. This "campus" of large grey lego block buildings, ring roads and munching rabbits on the lawns is slightly reminiscent of the Epcot Centre at Walt Disney World in the early 90's - all slightly dated, massive cafeteria with double sided till stations, built ahead of it's time but facing an uncertain future in Ireland as the Celtic Tiger recedes from growling to miaowing. A super long corridor (over 1km) connects the buildings and allows you to peer through windows onto factory floors with robot arms filling ink cartridges, whilst browsing art & memorabilia along the walls. Elderly gents from the executive board smile down at you from large pics in the lobby. I expected Walt Disney to be there alongside them!
Leixlip is a tough place to get to from Annagassan. The main reason for this is the access from the god-awful M50 Motorway (if you can call it a motorway), the fabulous Dublin ringroad. The road authorities in Ireland have the gall to put a 2 Euro charge on this road, even though it resembles a car park most of the time, or a total construction site, or both. The M50 is a dismal, crappy and soul destroying road with only 1 guarantee - daily gridlock... easily the equivalent of the worst road in whichever city YOU live in... So from Annagassan, I'd normally take the M1 (toll), to the M50 (toll), to the N4... and into the campus. However, I've quickly discovered backroads... country roads... the little roads that represent the old Dublin, the old Ireland, when few cars took to the roads and the concepts of commuting to business parks and satellite towns were completely foreign. So thanks to Google Maps and my trusty Garmin Lady, I fly down the M1, off at Drogheda, onto the Duleek Road, past the huge concrete plant, across the N2 for a couple of kms, through the village of Ratoath, past Fairyhouse Racecourse, onto the old N3, take a right turn at Clonee, along the backlanes to the back of Leixlip, through the village, over the N4, into the campus past the munching rabbits... I'm sure this set of shortcuts could even be perfected further. My new route reduces my toll payments... you keep moving (more or less)... you see people & places... you take some corners at high speeds, go past about 3 Lidl Supermarkets and too many pubs to count.
Stephen King published a short story many years back called "Mrs Todd's Shortcut"... the fictional tale of Mrs Todd, who's obsessed with finding shortcuts. At one point, right after Mrs Todd has made an impossibly short trip down to Castle Rock, the narrator finds some things stuck to the sides and front of her car that aren't of this world. Dangerous things. Things with teeth. The routes Mrs. Todd is driving aren't for the faint of heart. Enough said.

Comparing London Airports...

2008-08-18T01:34:00.017+01:00

photo from The Anglo American

We have 5 blog entries about London:
1. Comparing London Airports... August 08
2. Grey old Janury... January 08
3. East End August 07
4. London Calling! March 07
5. London and ipods... October 06

Well, we've sure racked up some air miles in Europe now, particularly through the UK, where Clare & I have now frequented the departure lounges of these airports between us: Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Southampton, East Midlands, Leeds/Bradford & Edinburgh... (not sure if Belfast City & Belfast International count too!) So Clare happened to be writing an email to a colleague (and some of our friends) about London Airports, with a little comparison guide. Here it is:
1) Heathrow (24kms west of London): Coming from Australia – you’ll probably come here, probably to T3 or T4 (in fact, you’ll have no choice but to come here!) AVOID T5 (mainly British Airways flights) like the plague if you want to keep your bags. We try and do everything to avoid this one. Every time something goes wrong at Heathrow - snow/strikes/breakdowns/fog, one minor slip up and the whole thing grinds to a halt, literally. And then it takes days to recover. It is just like what you see on television. The levels of security just keep changing here. I think they are taking pictures of you now like the US does. The US does eye checks, finger prints and a series of questions that they match to previous entries. Note that if you have 2 passports they are matching your answers to your passport number not name. Joe got caught on that one. Lots of long haul international flights, at often competitive prices (if you get the right deals, http://www.airline-network.co.uk/) but UK domestic and European flights from here are generally quite expensive. The Underground (Tube) into Central London is a lot cheaper than the Heathrow Express to Paddington, but you have to carry your luggage down there, which can be a real hassle – and it takes ages into Central London.
2) Gatwick (46km south of London): This is actually our favourite London airport. This is very easy to get to via the underground/train lines from Victoria Station in Central London (around 30 mins from Gatwick to Victoria). When we go to London for a daytrip, this is where we try and fly to if possible (the 10 Euro fares!) Both Ryanair & Aer Lingus fly here from Dublin so we get a lot of choice. The pain here is not the actual security but the ‘kids’ before the security section who make you have one bag and not extra bits ie. one handbag and absolutely nothing else, not a laptop bag, shopping bag or a packet of sandwiches. Which is ridiculous since the airlines and security let you have a handbag and a laptop bag. So other than the kids in yellow shirts, there never seem to be too many queues there (when we’ve been there!), and far less of the general stress of Heathrow or Dublin.
3) Luton (48km north of London): Not really London, but the main London airport for EasyJet, a few Ryanair flights and other boozed up charter airlines like Monarch & Thomas Cook. Staffed by kids - yes really - who barely know what a non EU passport is. Security used to be a piece of cake there and for a while they were trialling a weird machine (like a cat scan) that apparently can see thru your clothes. Still, gets you thru quite fast. This is the airport that was used by the ‘Airline’ reality TV show (EasyJet), ie. lots of people who only take a package trip to Spain once a year and have no idea - they turn up without their passports, etc, etc. My husband loves them (airport TV shows) so we know them all. And his aunt lives close by (Luton) so we have used this a fair bit. Trains to Kings Cross, London Bridge (more expensive than the Gatwick trains), and various coaches to Victoria Station, etc.
4) Stansted (48km north-east of London): Quite a well organised airport out in the countryside, but again with a lot of throughput (this is the main Ryanair Airport for London). Good shopping and food options compared with all other London airports. You often have to come here for connections to other parts of Europe - like Norway, etc, and Ryanair fly to different destinations from here (than Dublin). Bit of a distance from London – they have trains to East London (which we haven’t used before), and coaches to Victoria Station, etc. We tend to get car rental from here. Gatwick is way more convenient though. Security here always wants you to take your shoes off and belts, etc. I rarely have to take my shoes off at any airport except this one.

None of these airports have dogs to do anything. Everything would move faster if they did. They also don’t do ‘residue’ tests like they have had in Oz for years now.

Now, the airlines:
http://www.ryanair.com/
The low fares might initially look attractive, and they are if you follow all the rules and keep the cost of ‘extras’ down – but coming from OZ, be aware of the following:
1) You can’t do online check-in unless you have an EU Passport, so you must choose the airport check-in option (which costs extra) if you’re Aussie.

2) If you pay for a baggage check-in, you’ll get a 15kg allowance, not 20kg, definitely not compatible with coming off Qantas or Singapore Airlines, etc.
3) They WILL charge you for every extra kilo over 15 kilos. The Ryanair check-in staff at all their airports are outsourced contractors, and they get commission on every extra that gets billed. There is absolutely no negotiation with Ryanair staff over luggage.
4) No seating allocation = the running of the bulls. If you’re at a European Airport late at night waiting for a Ryanair flight, expect a stampede as the flight lands and prepares for take-off again.
5) If you do get left high and dry by Ryanair (and honestly, it hasn’t happened to us yet), and you’re in a hurry to get home, then you’ll have to get your credit card out and start paying your way back on normal airlines. That’s the price you pay for the cheap Ryanair fares.

For all that, I will say however, that every Ryanair flight has got us there, consistently, and pretty much on time. Don't be scared off - they are damn cheap if you're hunting for a bargain.

http://www.easyjet.com/
Don’t have too much to say on them, did a return trip from London to Athens in 2005. Their reputation is certainly less cheesy than Ryanair. Their initial fares might look more than Ryanair but are worth considering, and they go to some different places. No seating allocation. From what I remember, their crews are a bit more professional than Ryanair.
http://www.flybmi.com/
Worth comparing with Aer Lingus on the Heathrow-Dublin sectors, as they don’t charge extra for baggage, etc. Seating allocation is done.

Annagassan Viking Festival 2008

2008-08-12T21:04:00.008+01:00

flickr photo link: <Annagassan Viking Festival 2008>
Well, the festival is over. Everything went incredibly well, and as Ireland currently gurgles under the deluge of the century, someone upstairs was definitely shining down on Annagassan in good favour. Apart from a few short showers, we escaped completely unscathed. We think possibly 2000 people came through the village over the 2 days, and the highlight at the end of the festival was the burning of the monastery on the beach next to the harbour. There were moments of genuine theatre as the vikings fired their flaming arrows trying to set the thing alight. Then alight it was... once the fire got going it was fierce! This was framed by the most incredible rainbow across Dundalk Bay. The vikings, of course, were brilliant. Jesper even took an injury in the final battle on Sunday afternoon. The viking village was brilliant too. They made it their own for the 2 days. Conor and the volunteers did a great job, from set up to fund raising, conducting history tours and doing their best to control the car parking! There are too many people to mention. And the website (http://www.annagassanvikingfestival.com/) got a good mention by the politican who opened the festival.
There were great (long) nights in the pub, where sadly we had to leave around midnight Sunday as the village took turns singing songs with Cathal, Patricia & the other musicians. Simply great community & great craic - Ireland at it's best & most awe-inspiring. Unfortunately we don't have many photos of our own as Clare & I were literally run off our feet from Friday evening to Sunday evening, but there is another site with photos - Derek Tuite Photography, Saturday & Sunday, and we did manage to get some photos of the burning of the monastery on Sunday evening. Perhaps Clare will write some words too...

A Tale of 2 Two Towns

2008-08-05T01:21:00.031+01:00

31st Annual Ballyshannon

Folk & Traditional Music Festival

YouTube Clip (1): The Homes of Donegal - Paul Brady 1985, written by Seán MacBride
YouTube Clip (2): Ballyshannon Folk Festival

The Homes of Donegal (Seán MacBride).

"I've just stepped in to see you all
I'll only stay a while
I want to see how you're gettin' on
I want to see you smile.
I'm happy to be back again
I greet you big and small
For there's no place else on Earth just like
The Homes of Donegal."

This weekend at Ballyshannon, we were treated to 2 brilliant and emotional renditions of this classic Irish ballad. The first, on Saturday night, by political songstress Eleanor McEvoy (and very nicely done), and the second, on Sunday night, by the incredibly talented Jim McKee, with a literally breathtaking finale by PJ McDonald on the whistle. It drew gasps and cheers from the packed audience – vocals, guitar, cello & whistle soaring to heights of musical complexity & harmony. Beyond amazing really, especially for those of us that don’t play a note. It’s quite difficult to put the musical artists we saw this weekend in any sort of order. Suffice to say they were the absolute best of trad music that Ireland has to offer, no doubt. So we’ll write about them all, and we’ll put a few YouTube clips up, which might just offer a taste of our experiences, albeit in poor quality. More on all the music a little later…
Ballyshannon, in the southern most part of Donegal, is the birthplace of the poet, William Allingham and is one of Ireland's oldest towns. It’s pretty small - 2 main streets and loads of pubs, including Dicey Reilly’s & Finn McCool’s. This was so interesting because we haven’t actually seen these names in Ireland before although they’ve got huge international appeal as Irish theme pubs (Brisbane is saturated by them!) The publican of Dicey Reilly’s here in town is… you guessed it, Mr Dicey Reilly. He has brothers all over the world. Finn McCool’s would have to be one of the smallest pubs I’ve seen in Ireland - I guess his relatives went overseas too? So, plenty of creamy guinness, brilliant music, but a dearth of any decent food in the whole town unless you like average Chinese or bad takeaways. Sorry to be critical, but some of these Irish towns could do better. Anyway, we loved it.
We stayed in a Bundoran, a few kilometres down the road, with a spectacular mountainous backdrop. But if ever there was a tale of 2 towns, it would be right here. Contrary to the slick advertising from the local tourist authorities, Bundoran was tacky and somewhat rundown. I guess we should have taken note of the Lonely Planet. Full of B&B’s, demountable holiday homes and trinket shops. Yes, it has surf beaches & golf courses, but the culinary highlight seemed like KFC on the main road, and the area around the funfair was rundown and boarded up. A white limo from the Circus Chicago did circuits of the town, blaring their pitch through loud speakers adding to the atmosphere of the whole place.
I suppose everything in life is relative. The kids in Australia might get to Coffs Harbour or Surfers for holiday, while the kids here get Bundoran or maybe Wexford, unless Mum & Dad can afford a trip to Spain. But if you grew up in Belfast or Derry, then Bundoran on a nice day would seem pretty good. I grew up in an English seaside town – Southsea. Amusement pier, funfair, pebble beaches, rock candy. The shutters come down in winter and the carnies leave town. But in Bundoran, it seemed like the shutters had already come down a long, long time ago and left the town to the Circus Chicago and the horrible themed pubs. Not good.
Our B&B – Marlboro House (Food, Rhythm & Booze), €70/nt, tried hard. The bed was ok, the service was ok, but the breakfast menu options were non-existent (contrary to their website) and the whole placed constantly reeked of deep frying (Michael, you really need some air extractors in the kitchen). On the Sunday night, a live band below our room continued until after 2am. The Polish blokes shouting & pissing in the carpark outside our window didn’t help either. Ok – that’s their business, and we didn’t mind too much. We were dog tired from being out all day and our trad music concert each night. But if either of our parents had been staying there, they would have been out of there like a shot. There’s no doubt that investment has been made in this property, and again, people might think we’re being critical, but little things like offering a breakfast choice for people who don’t want the “fry” – bacon, egg, sausage, etc. should be considered. For an establishment that’s setting out to prove their culinary excellence, perhaps they should offer some fruit or yoghurt, or just something else. It’s the simple things that might make all the difference and bring people back to Bundoran.
We did a little day tripping between music sessions, particularly to nearby Rossnowlagh with its wide sandy beach and excellent surfing conditions. A far, far better place for an Irish beach holiday than Bundoran! Hey, you can even drive your car onto the beach and set up your windbreak, but look out for those tides… We had lunch at the Smugglers Creek Inn, dating back to 1845, with an excellent bar menu (all seafood) - best meal of the weekend.

So, on with the music...

1. Mórga (majestic) - Headed up by Barry Brady on the accordion, this young 4 piece group created some truly amazing and sophisticated trad music, different from trad sounds we'd heard before... fantastic harmonies & almost hypnotic in some ways (some of their sets were up to 10 minutes long). With the accordian, banjo, fiddle & bodhran, I think it might have been one of their first 'big' gigs, and they turned up at Ballyshannon with no CD, which was a pity as we would have bought one or two! In a way, they set the high standard for the festival, as they were the first of 9 acts across 3 nights at the Abbey Theatre. Luckily Mórga had 2 further sessions down at the Bridgend Pub, as they were well worth a second listen.

2. Eleanor Shanley - When confronted by the prospect of a "female singer of Irish ballads", Clare and I wondered if we could possibly bolt for the door to sit this one out, but we decided that might look a bit bad. Our feelings were confirmed when Eleanor took to the stage and started belting out her tunes (and stories) of how she 'd been "done wrong", in genuine Dolly Parton style. Much too close to country & western for our liking and it went on for too long. Sorry Eleanor, you're just not our cup of tea. This was our only real disappointment at the festival.

3. Dervish - Dervish took to the stage with deserved acclaim & applause. They've been around since 1989, and their trad sounds have a rich sophistication yet being competely exclusive, much due to the amazing vocals of Cathy Jordan.

"Dervish concert performances are a myriad of tones and moods ranging from high energy tunes, played with fluidity and intuitiveness, to beautifully measured songs, from charming lyrics of life and love, to inspiring melodies that lift audiences from their seats. All the elements are drawn together by Cathy Jordan's masterful stage presence. Her stories to the songs and her interaction with the audience draws people into the music in a way very few performers can achieve."

Well known in Ireland & internationally, Dervish were the only group at the festival we'd really heard of before (and in fact, we had one of their CD's), so the sound was familar yet inspiring all the same. The tracks from their new album (Travelling Show) were great and prompted us to buy a signed copy after the show. This brilliant and polished show rounded off night one at Ballyshannon, and we could already see how (and hear) how this festival was held in reverence by the artists who played here.

4. Téada - kicking off night 2 in style, Téada had a great trad sound. Much like Mórga & Dervish, their harmonies of instruments (fiddle, button accordion, flute, guitar/bouzouki & bodhrán) produced a seamless & pure Celtic sound. Definitely a step well above the average pub trad session sound. Looking at their group website, they're very well travelled and probably have more exposure overseas than in Ireland, where they remain relatively unknown (we certainly couldn't find any of their CD's in music shops when we went looking recently).

Fields of Gold

2008-07-31T01:08:00.001+01:00

Fields of Gold
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Gateway

2008-07-31T01:07:00.009+01:00

Gateway
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Green

2008-07-31T01:07:00.007+01:00

Green
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Growth

2008-07-31T01:07:00.005+01:00

Growth
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Hidden

2008-07-31T01:07:00.003+01:00

Hidden
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Making hay while the sun shines

2008-07-31T01:07:00.001+01:00

Making hay while the sun shines
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Millpond

2008-07-31T01:06:00.003+01:00

Millpond
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Organic

2008-07-31T01:06:00.001+01:00

Organic
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Sailing

2008-07-31T01:05:00.005+01:00

Sailing
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Shining

2008-07-31T01:05:00.003+01:00

Shining
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Tracks

2008-07-31T01:05:00.001+01:00

Tracks
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

When I get around to it

2008-07-31T01:04:00.001+01:00

When I get around to it
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Carlingford photos...

2008-07-29T23:10:00.007+01:00

flickr photo link: <Summer in Carlingford & Dundalk>
Just a few weekend photos. We're off to Ballyshannon this weekend for (hopefully) a good bit of trad music...

Irish Pub of the Week #14

2008-07-28T22:47:00.000+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #14, "P J O'Hare's" in Carlingford, Louth. There's something rather special about Carlingford and P J O'Hare's, with it's Anchor Bar, Oyster Bar & Restaurant is most definitely a favourite for us. Located in a tiny lane in the heart of the village, it's a great spot for a Guinness and a dozen oysters after a good walk up Carlingford Mountain. Clare says she never liked oysters till she came here! And look out for the collection of ‘authentic’ leprechaun bones on display to hoodwink unsuspecting tourists...

Diet Coke of Muggy...

2008-07-25T12:10:00.004+01:00

Dublin is muggy right now. Not muggy in the Darwin, or Cairns, or Bangkok kind of way. Not even muggy in the Brisbane kind of way really. Perhaps just a diet coke kind of muggy… 1/2 a calorie of muggy. Mottled sky, trying to rain in a slightly “steamy” kind of way, and when you walk around for a while, you start to feel slightly damp (like when I walk to work). I laugh because the BBC news goes on and on about “uncomfortable” sleeping conditions, as it won’t go “under 14c tonight”. But you have to remember, most Irish people would melt if they went to Bali or Bangkok… they would simply vanish and cease to be. Heat here is limited to around 20c, and if it goes higher than that, the roads start to melt too. But you still see smoke coming from chimneys, and people walking around in coats. Funny old Dublin.

Northern exposure...

2008-07-14T21:24:00.009+01:00

flickr photo link: <An Irish weekend, 11-13 Jul 08>
Yet more photos! We promise there is absolutely no association between: steel jaws, Nipper the cat, swans biting Clare and The Queen... We headed north of the border after "The Twelth", when the Protestants take to the streets. Not much to see on the Sunday except for Scarva, where the village was enjoying cups of tea and watching brass bands, but we just wanted pictures of the signs really...

Irish Pub of the Week #13

2008-07-13T22:56:00.002+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #13, "The Gall Bog Bar" in County Down. OK, all politics aside, this pub is in Northern Ireland, but our Irish Pub of the Week is based on interesting pubs rather than borders! Sometimes you see these little pubs in the countryside - they almost look like someones living room... They might have cars parked outside, maybe not. We guess these are pubs for locals only. Anyway, this one in County Down caught our eye as we drove past.

Irish Pub of the Week #12

2008-07-13T22:51:00.002+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #12, "The Bleeding Horse" on Camden St, Dublin. I'm staying in Ranelagh at the moment, and kept seeing this popular city pub with a fascinating name!

Dublin & more fog tales...

2008-07-10T20:43:00.013+01:00

Boyne River Bridge... Lost in the fog...

Keep your nerve, keep your distance!

(click on the pics for the large version)

I'm hanging out in Dublin at the moment, which is kind of cool as I get to walk to work. I soon realised that I haven't lived in a "city centre" for a long, long time now (maybe Bondi Junction, Sydney back in the 90's?) I'm talking the sort of area where takeaway shops abound, traffic builds up outside the front door in the morning, Starbucks is 100 metres away and homeless people lie in the doorways... Dublin Trams (the LUAS) swirl by every few minutes. There's a real inspiration to being in the city though, and you get some nice evening walks past Dublin mansions with iron railings, neighbourhood parks (like Notting Hill) and all types of people out and about enjoying the summer evenings, although it has been bloody cool (and wet!) Yes, we talk about weather so much here - maybe it's a national pastime. Wednesday morning started in Dublin with pouring rain, buckets of it... eventually fading to blue skies & sunshine by late afternoon - then, driving north out of the city, a thick fog descended around 7pm - an absolute pea souper. This swirled all around Dublin Airport, which was already conked out by a radar failure trapping thousands of people for the night. Certainly made driving on the M1 a challenge too (pictures above).

Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk I

2008-07-08T14:21:00.007+01:00

We hope you like these 3 YouTube video clips of the brilliant Irish Trad gig we went to the other night (there are 3 blog updates in a row here). This was The Little Tern Benefit Concert at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July 2008. The very best of Irish trad music! The first clip features Patrick Martin (on pipes) & Cathal Johnson (of the French Fiddles).

Here are the artist bio's:
Patrick Martin is a full-time musician specialising in Highland Bagpipes and Irish Uilleann Pipes. Having studied both these instruments for most of 28 years, he can offer live music of the highest calibre. Patrick is also in demand for recording work by a number of bands and singers desiring some pipe or whistle music on their arrangements. His business is called Ground Bass Music which refers to the sound of pipe drones. Also of Riverdance fame, he is prize winner in the European and 6th in the World Championships in 2006. He is also involved in the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland who undertake a series of concerts each year both in Ireland and overseas. Their soul-stirring performances have been described as 'inspriational', 'astounding' and 'ranking at the very top of orchestral brilliance'.
The name French Fiddles is derived from Louth local dialect meaning mouth organ/harmonica. The band started up about 2 years ago in 2006. Since then the band has developed a steady organically grown set that has evolved and continues to evolve along it's journey. Cathal Johnson on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Isabel Nic Chuireann on guitar and piano accordion, Jacque Faure on clarinet and sax and Andrew Grafton from Eurostar fame on guitar and vocals are the main members. But the band tends to expand or contract at times adding the likes of Eamon Doyle on bluegrass style fiddle. Their influences range from traditional music from around the world to contemporary, to local styles from around Ireland. French Fiddles play original music augmented with essentially traditional Irish, country folk, blues and jazz, old-timey, contemporary and bluegrass styles. An eclectic bunch who are in the process of making a commercial CD and hope to have it finished soon.

Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk II

2008-07-08T14:19:00.002+01:00

French Fiddles playing at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July, 2008.

Hope you like it...

Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk III

2008-07-08T14:05:00.009+01:00

French Fiddles playing at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July, 2008. Sorry, this trad piece is cut off after 3 mins, 5 secs. I need more memory cards!

Bye for now...

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

2008-07-03T15:30:00.017+01:00

North Stradbroke Island, QLD, Australia

flickr photo link: <Brisbane, Jun 08>
13 Jun 08 EI34 BFS/LHR 1255/1415
13 Jun 08 BA15 LHR/SYD 2135/0515+2 (777 via SIN)
15 Jun 08 QF508 SYD/BNE 0805/0935
28 Jun 08 QF529 BNE/SYD 1315/1445
28 Jun 08 BA10 SYD/LHR 1635/0620+1 (747 via BKK)
29 Jun 08 EI33 LHR/BFS 1050/1210
So we're back in Ireland after a very nice 2 weeks in Brisbane. I've started putting some photos from our trip on flickr, although perhaps that goes against the spirit of "Adventures in Dundalk", so our Australian content should be kept to a bare minimum! Heathrow behaved itself this time with no light dustings of snow or lost baggage. Just the normal level of construction & sticky carpets (come to think of it, which airport in the world isn't under construction?) Anyway, it's been raining A LOT in Ireland while we were away. In fact, we didn't get too far from Belfast Airport before it started coming down again as we walked across the carpark into the giant Sainsburys at Sprucefield. Got some shopping, and immediately compared the cost against OZ (Coles/Woolies). Our consensus was... there isn't a whole lot of difference. We got quite a few bags of stuff for £44 (OZ $88), so there you are.
Our Annagassan Viking Festival is getting closer (09/10 August), my office moves out to Leixlip around the end of August, and I'm staying quite a few nights in Dublin over the coming month and a half too. So, back into the mist/pouring rain/fog tonight for the next installment. Take your choice.

A Summer Day in Listoke Gardens

2008-06-08T23:01:00.010+01:00

flickr photo link: <A Summer Day In Listoke Gardens>
We had a nice late Sunday afternoon at Listoke Gardens, a little estate just down the road near Drogheda. Rustic gardens, grass tennis courts, strawberries & cream, John Constable views. All in aid of the Guide Dogs for the Blind. This was a real slice of Anglo-Ireland that is quite apparent in the area where we live, but not always seen. Ended the day with some music - keyboard, guitar & sax. Nice.
Just 4 more days, then we're off to Australia for our flying 2 week visit. Looking at the industrial action going on by Qantas engineers in Australia at the moment almost makes me glad we're actually flying BA for the long haul sectors, but then again, their baggage handling record ain't exactly the best. Happy Travels!

Massif Central, France

2008-06-08T00:52:00.022+01:00

The truly incredible Millau Viaduct on the A75 Motorway, Massif Central. We braved pouring rain, fog & hazardous driving conditions to get this shot!

Gimel-les-Cascades, in the Limousin region of Central France.

Massif Central

flickr photo link: <Massif Central, May-Jun 08>
31 May 08 FR202 DUB/STN 0630/0745
31 May 08 FR8776 STN/LIG 1035/1305
02 Jun 08 EI553 LYS/DUB 1615/1725 (Joe)
06 Jun 08 EI553 LYS/DUB 1615/1725 (Clare)
So we're sitting in the Qantas Club at London Heathrow on 13 June (well, the British Airways Lounge to be exact). It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to sit in a Qantas Club – possibly Madrid. Having membership helped us drop off our luggage at T4 around 6 hrs before the flight. Extremely useful, but what we hadn’t realised was that the Club now has real meals available in addition to the alcohol, magazines, newspapers & Wi-Fi, etc. So we really shouldn’t have spent the money buying lunch downstairs! At Belfast Airport (where we left this morning) Clare picked up (yet another) travel magazine called ‘Travel’. Reading it inspired her to get cracking about our short trip to the French countryside on the recent long weekend. The notes were left behind in Ireland, so here goes…

While Ireland generally gets the rain in winter (joke!), the Massif Central, France, gets the rain in summer... so the forecast for our little weekend trip didn't look too good. Admittedly it was only as we made a dash down the A75 Motorway to the Millau Viaduct on the Sunday afternoon that we were immersed into total liquidity - with cloud & fog. But it was worth it. If you want to drive along one of the most amazing motorways in the world, and see the French obsession with bridges and viaducts, this is definitely the place!

We started the weekend at Dublin airport, as is usually the case for us now. Only this weekend another 349,998 people were passing through the airport with us, as it was the first long weekend of ‘summer’. Given that Ireland only has around 4 million people, that’s almost 10% of the total population or around 25% of Dublin’s population. So we got up around 3am to get to the airport by 4.30am to join the herd. We only made it to the same flight the week before with minutes to spare, by sneaking into the front of the security queue, so NO sleeping in this morning. Clare ended up with 2 hrs sleep after a fairly arduous audit in Dublin that meant she got home around 10.30pm then had to pack and prepare, not just for the weekend trip but also for a work project meeting after the long weekend in Clermont-Ferrand.

This was a 2 airline trip. We took a connection out with Ryanair, firstly to London Stansted, and then checked in again for the flight to Limoges. We flew home directly from Lyon (on different dates) with Aer Lingus. That allowed us to cross the Massif Central by car, from west to east. Occupying a hilltop in the heart of the Limousin countryside, Limoges Airport was small, attractive and well organised (unusual for some Ryanair destinations!) And the weather was wonderful – warm and sunny! The lady at the Europcar counter was being harassed by Brits who refused to sign forms or turned up without credit cards, but we were eventually issued with a nice Hyundai i30 (and we did over 1000 km's in 48 hours).

We had some lunch and headed off down the A20 to Brive and into the Limousin countryside proper. Yes there were Limousin cattle everywhere and only Limousin cattle. Overall the countryside seemed empty of cultivation and livestock – no sheep, just Limousin cattle! Clare had done research for the trip while Joe had done the bookings so off we drove to find our destination for the night – we called it Aubergine. It was a B&B up in the mountains above the town, surrounded by forest. On the way, with the Garmin lady telling us where to go, we stopped to check the map at a dead end and found a flooded river with Kayakers racing up and down trying to master the white water. The B&B was wonderful, exactly as described and even with a black cat on the front sofa as a welcoming committee. Clare’s type of place! By this time we were quite wrecked as it was around 5pm. We were booked into the restaurant for dinner at 7.30pm, so instead of doing the sensible thing and resting for a bit, we sped away in the car to a couple of very interesting places Clare had researched from the Lonely Planet – Gimel-Les-Cascades. After seeing the local rivers in flood, we knew the cascades would be impressive. Following the Garmin lady again, we certainly took the long and scenic way to the cascades (why do we keep trusting her!?) We went deeper into the mountains, up hills, down dales and through some very lush countryside, past shimmering lakes and onto ever smaller lanes. The village was almost deserted with a few shops open and no other tourists at all. It was June - wasn’t this summer? Even the B&B’s appeared closed. Just out of the carpark we found a local cat who wanted a chat and came running. Then off to the ruined castle and could see and hear the cascades but couldn’t work out how to get to them. The views over the village were postcard perfect. We just followed some other people down the lanes and lo & behold, the cascades. Yes you were meant to pay to walk down to the bottom of them but the gate was closed and we could see the best from the top. We looked around and found some interesting signs in English. The sun was setting, so we wondered back to the car and found that people had come out and the B&B was indeed open and full. Looked like a party of Germans who’d been fishing, had filled the place. What with the lakes and streams around here, the fishing would be good!

To be completed...

Instructions from the Garmin lady...

2008-05-25T19:22:00.014+01:00

flickr photo link: <Rickmansworth, 24 May 08>
Hi all, I've also been doing some other photo updates today, catching up on recent trips...
BARCELONA photos on flickr: <Barcelona, Mar 08>
24 May 08 FR202 DUB/STN 0630/0745
24 May 08 FR293 STN/DUB 1935/2050
We purchased a reasonable Sat Nav thingy last week. Let's call it "Garmin". It came pre-loaded with maps for Ireland, Britain & Europe, and Australia/USA, etc. can be purchased later. Being a basic model, it only has one voice, whom I now call the "Garmin lady"... It is she who says "stay left, keep left, take the 2nd exit on the roundabout", etc. Of course we've discovered that many roads around here, although probably centuries old, are not recognised by the Garmin lady, who immediately thinks you're tearing across the open countryside, and tries to correct you. It's at this point that I lower her volume. The Garmin lady also tried to send me down a one-way street in Dublin the other morning, after I'd dropped off Clare for a fish factory audit, located somewhere between Mountjoy Prison and an eye hospital in an old gothic pile that looked like a workhouse from the 1840's. Just the usual Dublin. Later that day, she did the same "one-way" trick again. So after that I ignored the Garmin lady - both her Dublin direction antics and her incredibly slow speed in acquiring an Irish satellite signal.
That was, until I switched on the Garmin lady again in the UK yesterday, after a short Ryanair hop from Dublin. This time, she acquired the satellite signal incredibly fast - is this a conspiracy against Ireland? Yes, the Garmin is truly portable & versatile, but the Budget car we'd hired at Stansted Airport had an incessant BEEP from the radio every 30 seconds - enough to drive you mad. We had to get the Budget kid to fix it. And as if the Korean factory worker that designed the beeping hadn't had enough of a laugh, every time you started the car, the radio was programmed to come on at Volume 10. Clare was not impressed. It was on the M25 that the Garmin followed suit, by beeping everytime we went past a traffic camera, then beeping incessently to tell us our average speed was 64 kph. That was, until we hit the crawling traffic after the M1, where every second car seemed to be overheating and the football fans had their windows wound down. Grinding to a halt with petrol bubbling away at $50 a litre...
But we had a very nice day in the UK - for my Aunt & Uncle's 50th Wedding Anniversary in Rickmansworth. We left Annagassan at 4.30am and got home at 10.30pm, which by our calculations is approx. half the journey time of our upcoming trip to Australia. We got to see everyone - all the aunts, uncles, cousins & their kids. Very good. The Ryanair pilot on the way back to Dublin seemed quite determined to make it home for a football match or something. We reversed away as soon as the doors were closed, tore down the Stansted taxiway at breakneck speed (I thought he was gonna try and lift the nose at one point), lined up and took off pronto, bumped our way back to Dublin, a couple of aerobatic turns, slammed it down, brakes on, olympic speed-record taxi back to the D Gates... I think we did 'door close' to 'door open' in about 45 mins.
We're off to France next weekend (long weekend in Ireland) - who knows what the Garmin lady will make of the French countryside? Then Australia in 3 weeks time. I guess we'll keep flying till the oil runs out...

Annagassan Viking Festival 2008

2008-05-22T16:55:00.006+01:00

I've finally finished the website for the Annagassan Viking Festival 2008... http://www.annagassanvikingfestival.com/
So, if you're in Ireland, and you're looking for something to do on the 9th & 10th of August this year, then head to Annagassan and join us... We'll have a great party! Not sure how many guests we can fit in our apartment... :) Off to the UK this weekend. Bye for now.

The amazing Jerry Holland

2008-05-18T10:36:00.003+01:00

Jerry Holland plays the fiddle at Fiddle Fair 2008, West Cork Hotel, Skibbereen, Ireland on Sat 10 May 2008. He is truly in a class of his own. Yes, the video is terrible, but the sound is magic... Of course it was far better to be there. If you like trad music, enjoy!

Fiddle Fair 2008

2008-05-12T22:39:00.045+01:00

There are 2 blog entries on West Cork, Ireland
1. Fiddle Fair 2008 May 08
2. St. Patrick's Day Weekend March 07

flickr photo link <Fiddle Fair 2008> (still adding more photos)
NEW! YouTube clip link <The Amazing Jerry Holland>
What a wonderful weekend. We're driving home from Baltimore, West Cork, using the laptop in the car. We really love West Cork. Maybe lots of Irish people think that Connemarra or Donegal is the real Ireland, but we think that County Cork is the ultimate Ireland - the countryside, the scenery, the people, the food and the music. BUT THE FIDDLE FAIR... MY GOD, THE MUSIC WAS VERY, VERY GOOD! I think we may have heard some of the best fiddle music in the world over the last 48 hours. We heard fiddlers from Canada, Spain and all over Ireland, and people had come from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain & the USA to hear the music. As well as the "fiddle" enthusiasts, there were yachties at the pubs still in their buoyancy vests and divers still in their dive gear! Even a TV crew filming a show about Jeremy Irons who actually played a gig at the fiddle fair on Sunday afternoon. But we gave him a miss and went to see Leonard Barry playing his uilleann pipes at the O'Driscoll Castle instead. So let's start at the beginning...
Clare raced down from work in the far north of the Republic of Ireland to pick up Joe from work on the southern side of Dublin. All good going until Clare got lost around the Dublin Docklands! Eventually by 7.30pm or so we hit the M50 and really got going on the road south. Got to the "Rathmore House" B&B (€75/nt) at Baltimore, Co Cork around 11.30pm. This was one of the best B&B's we've stayed in - awesome harbour views out of our bedroom window; good breakfasts with options of the full Irish with Clonakilty black pudding, or a platter of Cork cheeses. Guess which Clare had? Not the black pudding... That's another thing we always notice about Co Cork - the support of the local food industry, and what great local food it is. We managed to pick up some smoked mackarel dip & smoked salmon pate from the Union Hall Fish Co-op at the local store in Baltimore, where they also sold 3 different local black puddings - not just the famous Clonakilty black puddings.
We had bookings for 3 concerts over the weekend and anticipated an early start on Saturday morning. But the "weekend" had started for some on Thursday morning, and by Saturday morning more than a few people including the muso's had had a very late/early session on Friday night - so the 12.30pm concert started around 1pm'ish! By then there was a queue going up the stairs of the Dún na Séad Castle (O'Driscoll Castle), built in 1215. A couple of impatient Americans were making comments on the Irish time keeping skills. Clare said we we should all go back to the pub and wait for a bit. A local Irishman said "yes, you're copping on quick!" But we'd already been to the local pubs. First we'd checked out the little harbour, then Clare bought some postcards at the craft shop, then we got some rum & cokes while Clare checked out the tourist literature and watched the 10.30am local island ferry steam away at 12noon... Irish time. There are 3 islands off the coast here that you can easily get to (in Summer) with people living on them year round. But there weren't many people around this morning. We later found out that the Friday night session had finished just a few hours before...
3 main pubs face Baltimore Harbour, with a few more in the back streets. We spent most time at Jacob's Bar & Bushe's. Jacob's Bar must have been refurbed quite recently we think... could easily fit in at Byron Bay. They had staff from France & NZ as well as locals. Bushe's (linked to W. Goggin) was far more traditional. The barman at Bushe's seemed like an Irish version of "Daffyd - The only gay in the village!" He was very efficient at serving Guinness and crab sandwiches. We also saw him cleaning the pub windowsills on Sunday morning. Now George W Bush claims to be a decendant from this village, not a notion much supported by the locals...
A brief history of Baltimore by Clare
So the village (yes, the US city is named after this place) clearly relies on tourism now, but was (and still is really) the ancestral home of the O'Driscoll clan. They specialised in piracy in the 1500/1600's. They pissed off other people including other pirates and one day in the 1600's some pirates from Morocco sailed in and took 107 prisoners in retaliation for some activity of the O'Driscoll's and took them back to North Africa into slavery. Only one person made it back to Ireland about 20 years later to tell what happened. But at the Heritage Centre in nearby Skibbereen, they mentioned that actually only 2 out of the 107 were actually Irish - the rest were English settlers. Later on, some Irish from Waterford came down and did the castle over, after being pissed off. Things went downhill from there, then in 1845 the famine really hit this area. It was very badly hit due to the massive reliance on the potato for the 60% or so of the population who were landless peasants living in rented mud huts with one pig and a few chickens. The Great Famine Commemoration Exhibition at the Heritage Centre commemorates the tragic period in the 1840s that is known in Irish History as the Great Hunger. Skibbereen was one of the worst affected areas, and the events of the era are depicted using local characters and events. Well worth a visit.
But enough of history and back to the music... The first concert on the Saturday featured 2 sisters from Dingle, Aoife & Deirdre Granville playing mainly the fiddle and harp but also the flute & tin whistle. The fiddling was good but the harp playing was really amazing. We'd never heard anything like it, rather like Enya without synthesis. A particularly good number was "Beauty" from the Blasket Islands that the girls learnt from their grandmother. Aoife is certainly a talented fiddle player, but it made us realise just how good the level of playing at our local, The Glyde Inn, is on Friday nights. Lisa, the resident fiddle player, could hold her own in this festival, but she's off travelling now, and is likely to be on a beach somewhere between Koh Samet and Bryon. Lisa, if you read this, we miss your fiddling already! We bought some CD's after this concert and managed to support the various musicians with a few CD purchases, a couple of t-shirts and a poster during the festival.
We went back for a trad session at Jacob's Bar. Every second person in Baltimore seemed to have an instrument and some of the world's best were joining in, so for young muso's it was a great place. People were dragging around harps, banjos, fiddles, flutes and tin whistles in specially designed backpacks for such opportunities. We eventually headed back to our room at the B&B and took some great pics of the evening light fading over the harbour. At 8pm we joined the festival shuttle bus to the West Cork Hotel at Skibbereen. Stopped off at The Sibín pub in the back lanes of Baltimore. Worth a visit. Whilst we drove along, the girls from "The Polskadots" group played a fiddle session on the bus...
The Amazing Jerry Holland
The evening concert was in 2 parts. The first act was Jerry Holland & John Doyle. Wow. Fiddle playing like we'd never heard before - mesmerising & literally spine tingling. Jerry (the fiddler) was an old bloke from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Canada) with John (from Ireland) absolutely amazing on guitar. Whilst the Irish roots are deeply felt here, the influence of Jerry's Nova Scotia trad fiddle sound is really strong, and sounded to me almost as if from the American South, perhaps Appalachian... I took one clip of this show, and have watched it a few times. Just a really incredible set, with a very enthusiastic and supportive crowd. A hard act to follow.
Berrogüetto... Trad fusion brilliance
Once in a while, we can be witness to rare musical gems. Perhaps obscure, possibly never to be seen again. But I hold out hope that these guys might turn up at the Bluesfest one year, as they truly fall into the category of "Roots" - but much more than that... Berrogüetto hail from Galicia (Spain) but language is no barrier to their infectious blend of trad fusion, roots, classical and world music. Even Greek & Middle Eastern influences. Something reminded me of Bela Fleck, and on listening to their brilliant album "10.0", I even hear electronica there too, although they had no electronic instruments on stage. The 7 member group play: 2 fiddles (dueling fiddles!); accordian; bouzouki; flutes; 2 gaitas/pipes; guitar & bass; harp; percussions incl. bodrum, drums & tamborine; saxo; zanfona/hurdy-gurdy... The zanfona/hurdy-gurdy is an amazing instrument like a big boxy violin where you turn a handle on the end whilst playing the strings. The gaitas/pipes have a distinct sound and are closer to the Scottish bagpipes than the Irish (Uilleann) pipes (more on those later). The sound of Berrogüetto had strong Irish trad themes in some songs, Greek/Turkish influences in others, with dueling fiddles & pipes... Still somewhat hard to describe - you have to hear it for yourself! The name Galicia comes from the Latin name Gallaecia, associated with the name of the ancient Celtic tribe that once resided there, so you can really understand the Irish roots heard in these tunes...
The concert finished up around 12.30am, and by then trad sessions had already started in other bars at the hotel. The boys from Berrogüetto obviously didn't play enough fiddles for everyone! One trad session was running in the hallway with about 10 fiddles going. Another was going in the front bar led by Jerry Holland. Very good music. We kept on until 2am and caught the shuttle bus back to Rathmore House. Most people didn't make the bus and probably kept going till dawn...
The next morning we managed, just, to make it to breakfast by 10am, then checked out and made our way back to the village. Nobody was stirring, so we went for a drive up to the spectacular whitewashed Beacon on the clifftops. A few festival campers had put themselves in the fields around the Beacon carpark, and the sounds of a plucking banjo could be heard in the air - the trad sessions never end here! So we wandered up to the Beacon, trying to avoid slipping over the edge of the of the unprotected 100 metre+ clifftops - no fences here! Spectacular rugged views, and wildflowers on the hillsides. There's a Wooden Boat Festival here later in May, and some guys were out on the harbour training for the races. Yes we thought about the Virtue boys and took some pics just for Rob, Keith & John.
Back to Jacob's Bar for an iced coffee, then to "Daffyd - The only gay in the village" for a crab sandwich before the next concert at O'Driscoll Castle. This was Leonard Barry, playing uilleann pipes & Michelle O’Brien on the fiddle. Apparently the uilleann pipes are made individually for each person and are pitched at different notes - Clare is sooo not musicial and is probably not explaining this correctly! We'd heard these pipes in Clifden last year and once at our local too. Perhaps the fiddle playing was a touch high pitched today, but the pipes were brilliant with many reels, jigs and "sets" played for over 1 1/2 hours. Yes, Leonard was great, but we still think the bloke who did a session at the Glyde Inn one night was better. He'd spent a year touring the world with "Riverdance" and was damn good. God, now we're comparing uilleann pipe playing - have we been in Ireland too long? Anyway, there will be some clips linked here shortly. This is the sort of music that's played at "caleigh's" (spelling?) which is clearly the music that Australian bushdances are based on. We noticed that Leonard played pieces from County Clare, Donegal, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick and Sligo, but never from County Louth where we live. Why is this we wonder ???
Back to Jacob's Bar again for a last listen to the neverending trad session... dogs, kids and crab sandwiches, the Baltimore experience... before heading back on our long drive home. We drove through Kinsale on the way and ruled it out as some sort of Irish Noosa, without the rainforest. People walking along the esplanade with their icecreams, and fighting over carparks, etc. Oh, it's hitting 20c now, so summer is here at last (but don't expect it to last for too long!) Happy Days.

The Italian Wedding & Lake Maggiore

2008-05-01T21:24:00.012+01:00

flickr photo link: <Lago Maggiore & Wedding photos>

25 Apr 08 FR9428 DUB/BGY 1735/2115

27 Apr 08 EI437 MXP/DUB 2120/2255

This is Blog Post #100!
Oh wow... Of all the weekends away in the last year or whatever, I think Northern Italy was possibly one of the most theraputic and spectacular (but too much food again!) We started early Friday evening with a smooth 2 1/2 hr Ryanair flight from Dublin across France & The Alps (a truly amazing sunset over The Alps at dusk, but unfortunately no photos). A few turns and bumps, and we landed at Bergamo, about 40km northeast of Milan. Picked up a little Hertz Fiat with Sat Nav, and drove along the AutoStrada to Legnano where Tarynne, my old DHL team member from Brisbane now lives with her (fiance... now husband) Alessandro. It was late when we found our way into town - there was some major contruction going on, seemed like half the town was ripped up. After a little investigation, we located the "Hotel Elitis", our slightly dubious pre-booked 4 Star, but it was comfortable enough. Clare soon discovered a little coffee shop/nightclub that whipped us up some risotto and a couple of glasses of 7 yr old Havana Club. We fell asleep with the Italian racer boys revving their cars up and down the streets outside...

Next morning, after a very noisy Chinese tour group had left the building, we had a quick breakfast in the deserted restaurant. We met up with June, one of Tarynne's family friends, and she pointed Clare in the direction of the shoe shop across the street. So Clare did the Italian thing and bought shoes. We checked out the local supermarket for some essential supplies (and a bottle of limoncello). Downtown Legnano seemed pretty small. Not as attractive as many of the towns in Tuscany, but functional all the same, and well located with the AutoStrada running down the eastern side (North to Lake Maggiore, South to Milan).

The Wedding of Tarynne & Alessandro... We headed out for the 11am wedding at the Legnano Town Hall. Very nice it was, all done out in old wood panelling and the town flags of Italy. The wedding was a civil ceremony, conducted in Italian by an official looking bloke wearing a sash (possibly the Mayor?) and his assistant. Some obviously essential parts were translated into English (I think mainly for Tarynne!) There were lots of things we only partially understood but a very nice wedding all the same. Afterwards, Tarynne & Alessando were literally pelted with rice as they left the hall. Had a few photos outside, then we drove up to the reception venue.

To be completed...

Irish Pub of the Week #10

2008-04-21T11:17:00.003+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #10, "Blue Stack Lounge Bar" in the heart of Donegal Town. Didn't get the chance to go in this small place, but it looked kind of different!

Irish Pub of the Week #9

2008-04-21T00:50:00.004+01:00

Irish Pub of the Week #9, the big amazing yellow place on the road from Dundalk to Castlebellingham we've driven past hundreds of times, but what's it called? TEA WINE & SPIRITS STORES? If there is a name, then please tell me!

A few aviation photos...

2008-04-20T13:42:00.008+01:00

Hi all,
Yes I'm still a plane geek, and have put a couple of new (but quite small) photo sets online:
flickr photo link: <Aviation @ BCN Airport, 17 Mar 08>
flickr photo link: <Aviation @ DUB Airport 08>
The pics from Barcelona Airport were taken while we were waiting for our flight back to Belfast recently. The pics from Dublin Airport are my first for the year, dropping by the airport on a Sunday afternoon.
Bye for now.

Dark & Stormy

2008-04-18T21:32:00.005+01:00

It's another dark & stormy night in Annagassan, and that's not the rum & ginger variety. The onshore breeze has been blowing up for days, but tonight it's gale force and grey clouds have settled in. White caps ahoy, not a good time to cross the Irish Sea. Funny, trying to remember last April... The yellow fields are in bloom, the days are longer but there's no sign of anything resembling warmth at all. In fact, most days are still in the single digits... Clare has been in bed with tonsilitus and I had flu a few days ago. We need to soak up some foreign sunshine, but we're pretty unlikely to find that in northern Italy next weekend...
Yes, it's all been go go go since our trip to Paris. The morning after we got back (at 2am), Clare was back at the airport at 8am. What the? Went via Heathrow to Shanghai on Virgin Atlantic. But unfortunately the Visas for China were not quite in order, so they had to go on to Hong Kong (damn shame), and because of Rugby 7's week, the only hotel they could find was a luxury place at the airport, so no complaints from Clare! They finally flew back into China, did a factory inspection (did not pass muster), stayed in more luxury hotels, etc. The work side of things ended up being fairly easy as inspection plans changed and there was a local public holiday. So finally back to Shanghai where Clare went off to find eggs benedict on the Bund, and she found them (at M On the Bund) and took a river trip. Then flew back to Heathrow on Sunday morning (1 week after Paris), where all the local & European flights were in complete turmoil due to 2 hours of snow that morning (down to 1 runway). So another night at Heathrow, then back into Belfast at midday Monday. We had dinner at a Dundalk pub on Monday night, then Clare went off to Cork where more work awaited... Had enough yet?
In the meantime, we're working on a new 'ticket' lodging system at my work in Dublin (HP), so everyone has been working very hard. A few more people have been heading to the local pub for a quick tipple after work, but I avoid going there if I'm driving (which is generally far better in the evening rush than the morning).
So this weekend will be quiet. Might have a sleep in, read the Guardian, maybe feed some ducks, etc. Bye all.

The last plane out of Beauvais' almost gone...

2008-04-02T22:57:00.014+01:00

flickr photos coming soon...
28 Mar 08 EI528 DUB/CDG 1815/2050
30 Mar 08 FR29 BVA/DUB 2250/2315
Paris... Going straight into our 3rd weekend of travel was quite hard, believe it or not (ooh, poor us)... It seems like the working week extends into the weekend, often with no sleep-in, punctuated only by another dash to the check-in and another European airport somewhere, where the baggage takes so long to get to the belt, and you find yourself comparing the level of customs scrutiny from country to country, and how well organised the transport services are, etc. Paris scored quite highly in that regard. But this was so short – Paris in a weekend is like peering through the candy shop window, but you can't go in. You go up the Eiffel Tower, explore the back streets and ride the open top bus with the Americans, but you barely scratch the surface of this amazing city.
We started on the Friday evening with Aer Lingus from Dublin to Charles De Gaulle T1, which was like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with it's 70's chic & perspex tube travellators. We like Aer Lingus for the sheer reason that they do seat allocation, as opposed to Ryanair which is like boarding with the rhinoceros herd (for the sheer fear of being left behind?) We took the people mover under CDG to the train station, then the RER train into Paris (just over 8 Euros). This ended up about 200 metres from our hotel (Hotel Des Mines, €108/nt) on Blvd Saint-Michel in the 5th arrondissement. Nice little attic room with bath, like when Harrison Ford escaped across the rooftops in Frantic.
On Saturday morning (after we were able to get that all important sleep-in) Clare discovered a nearby carpet shop in world record time, and acquired a nice Iranian piece (what a bargain) for which we then acquired another piece of cabin luggage later that afternoon (to carry it back to Ireland). Our area was full of little boulangeries, street markets, loads of Vietnamese & Japanese Restaurants. You could explore here for days, then move onto another part of Paris... So we took the open top bus tour (still slightly cool) which took us up the Champs-Élysées, past the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower, into the traffic of Saturday afternoon in Paris – loads & loads & loads of police vans and demonstrators who seemed to be pensioners, fighting for better pensions or sick benefits, or something? In the meantime, Sue & Paul were racing to Paris on the TGV from Italy and arrived mid-afternoon. That night, we had a couple of happy hour drinks, then dinner in a restaurant cellar (we think they shoved the tourists in the cellar) which wasn't too bad (about €23 each). We took the metro to the Trocadéro to view the lights of the Eiffel Tower and barter with West Africans selling little light-up tower replicas (flashing away on our bookcase right now...)
On Sunday morning Clare discovered that she'd left her Irish credit card in the Iranian carpet shop the day before, so that had to be cancelled. Then we headed back to the Eiffel Tower, where we queued up (in increasing rain), and took the lift to the 2nd level. What an amazing structure, Clare stood well back from the edge! By this point it was really raining, so Clare, Sue & Paul headed for the Musée d'Orsay while I went to the nearby Musée de l'Armée and the Tomb of Napoleon at Les Invalides (originally built as a hospital and home for disabled soldiers by Louis XIV). Good way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon. As the afternoon faded away, we said goodbye to Sue & Paul and did our final sector on the open top bus tour, then back to our hotel for the shuttle to Beauvais.
Paris Beauvais Airport is part of the Ryanair model of “cheap” flying in Europe (as much as I still love 'em)... The model where you question just how far the airport could possibly be from your destination city. In this case, Beauvais is a town in the countryside of Northern France, a long long way from Paris (seemed like ½ way to Belgium). Beauvais is a large tin shed regional airport with some improvements like a little supermarket and café with crummy food. Much like Proserpine. Ryanair dominates this airport and the queues move like rhinoceros herds (from check-in queue to customs queue to boarding queue, etc.) Our plane was late (bad weather in Dublin)... Very Late... and as we became the last flight on the departure board, and Clare was due to head to China early the next day, we started adapting the lyrics of “Khe Sanh” by Cold Chisel...

“Well the last plane out of Beauvais' almost gone
Yeah the last plane out of Beauvais' almost gone
And it's really got me worried
I'm goin' nowhere and I'm in a hurry
And the last plane out of Beauvais' almost gone”

At some time well after 11pm, with our rhinoceros herd ready to stampede, the inbound Ryanair 737 touched down and achieved the fastest turnaround I've ever seen. With the threat of air traffic control delays if we didn't depart pronto, the pilot implored people to take their seats and we left Beauvais. They switched off the lights behind us. We landed in absolutely pouring rain in Dublin. Back to Annagassan at 2am. Now where are we going next weekend?

Easter Monday...

2008-03-26T21:14:00.005Z

flickr photo link: <Causeway Coast photos>
After Derry we headed on for some serious tourist spots like The Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. It was a popular day and cars were blocking the road at The GC to pay £5 for the National Trust car park. Lazy buggers. So we parked on a nearby lane instead and walked for free. We did however support the National Trust by eating some of their sandwiches in the tearoom, then followed the crowds down to the rocks, which I have always felt slightly unspectacular. An amazing rock formation yes, but does it deserve all the accolades? I'm not so sure (God I'm hard to please...) On to the Rope Bridge where we took pics of Sue & Paul walking across and admired the view from the cliffs. Again, people lined up with kids & dogs to cross the bridge and complete their touristic pilgrimage of Northern Ireland (but we didn't see them on the Bogside, mmm...) We made it back to the car just in time before hail & sleet reduced the temperature to 1ºc as we headed for Belfast.
Everyone seemed to be out shopping and going to the pub even with the Irish flags up in commemoration of the Easter Rising, well in some neighbourhoods anyway. Union Jacks flying in other neighbourhoods of course. The pub Paul had wanted to see in Belfast (The Crown Liquor Saloon) was closed, so we kept driving to the Balloo House in County Down which does superb food. We grabbed quite possibly the last table in the bar, but they still served us quickly and graciously, and the final bill for drinks & 2 courses put the Republic prices to shame (as we've found consistently in N.I.) We drove back to Annagassan via Newry with a quick tour of Dundalk in the dark... oh look, they've finished expanding the Aldi. Home for a few loads of washing and well earned sleep!
Next weekend... Paris!

Free Derry

2008-03-25T22:49:00.025Z

flickr photo link: <Derry photos>
It was cold when we arrived in Derry (aka Londonderry) on Easter Sunday. The late afternoon streets had been abandoned to the lager louts and the shutters were well and truly down. So we wandered along the 9 metre thick old city walls, looking down on the divided areas and murals from a distance. I should have worn 2 coats. It was grey and foreboding, and we returned along the grim Strand Road to our B&B (The Saddler’s House, £50/nt) which was quite nice. After a quick change we had dinner at an American style restaurant just down the street that did some great main courses but the desserts were a let down. We do give extra points to the young barman for mixing 2 Pina Colada's, and send this appeal to his management to buy him a new blender. Come on, they don't cost much!
The following morning Clare & Joe did a walking tour of The Bogside with a local guide (just the 3 of us!) Foreign tourists were out snapping pictures of the murals as we listened to the stories of the Battle of the Bogside and Bloody Sunday, from our guide's point of view. Perhaps we saw it in the wrong light, but Derry just seemed so far removed from the tourist brochures advertising art, culture & shopping (which are generally true of Belfast now). The entire history of this city is troubled and it felt like the 'troubles' just finished yesterday. It turned out we weren't far off the mark. We'd seen some posters around for a march at the local cemetery starting at 2.30pm in celebration (?) of the Easter 1916 uprising. We didn't go along, which was a good thing, as according to news reports, a riot kicked off at 3pm with police frisking kids, collecting 41 molotov cocktails, etc. Who they were rioting against and why? Who knows.
We left Derry towards the Giants Causeway with mixed feelings, hoping that one day this place may find some true peace.

Easter, Part I...

2008-03-25T20:25:00.012Z

flickr photo link: <Donegal photos> (Coming Soon)
Sue & Paul arrived in Dublin on Good Friday, which is one of those weird days in Ireland as although many things are closed, it's not an official public holiday, so lots of people have to work although they'd prefer to have a public holiday like all sensible countries have (like Australia!) Went straight to Trinity College for The Book Of Kells (Joe asks why you'd pay to see a crusty old book... heathen!) The Trinity Library is more impressive than the book itself. So Harry Potter, quite spectacular. Lots of original Gould books of birds & animals from everywhere - loads of them. Apparently the library books are mostly in Latin but catalogued by height, not author or subject matter. The students are allowed to take them out but it's difficult for anyone to find anything they want to read. Almost inspires you to apply to go to Trinity for 2 weeks or so to borrow the books.
It hailed as we drove up to Malahide, just north of Dublin. We had some lunch in a popular little cafe, but missed the last tour at Malahide Castle (this was because Clare & Sue had a dessert with lunch!) We missed every castle over the weekend for one reason or another. So we went home... We tried to go to our local pub that night, but it was closed :(
On Easter Saturday we went to Newgrange. Sue & Paul did the tour, Joe read the papers and Clare took the laptop to the Café (decorated with plastic lampshades from a Stanley Kubrick movie). We then meandered up to Donegal with a few stops in haunted cemeteries (Pagan & Christian) and the like. We checked into the Atlantic Guest House in Donegal Town (€60/nt) right in the middle of the town. It rained in Donegal, as usual, and we eventually found somewhere to eat and a good, but rather solemn trad music session at 'The Reel Inn' pub that night. Lots of laments about leaving Donegal during the famine to live in the slums of Chicago. Definitely no rollicking versions of 'Bound for South Australia' or 'Belle of Belfast' like we have at our pub on Friday nights.
On Sunday we headed around the coast of Donegal and visited numerous teashops - not for tea but for coffee, cakes & souvenirs. We drove up to Slieve League cliffs, the highest in Europe at 600m - quite spectacular (Clare says it was a bit scary). Went for a walk up for a higher view - Clare slipped in the mud but luckily they had a solid fence and she didn't fall into the sea, just got a wet bum and muddy jeans. Had lunch at a greasy spoon place in Dungloe. Onwards towards Derry via more mountain passes, past Mt Errigal (looked like Mount Doom from LOTR) and through Glenveagh National Park. There was a castle here that involved a 40 min walk from the car park in the wind and rain so we gave it a miss. Then on towards Derry.
We thought the Lonely Planet writers got a bit excited over Donegal and raved a bit too much about alleged 'alpine' passes. They were interesting with a windswept beauty, but not alpine. Lots of sheep and jolly jumping lambs everywhere, and loads and loads of holiday bungalows in the coastal areas. Another part of Ireland ticked off the book!

Barcelona!

2008-03-19T22:35:00.011Z

flickr photo link: <Barcelona, Mar 08>
14 Mar 08 EI46 BFS/BCN 1040/1420
17 Mar 08 EI47 BCN/BFS 1500/1640
We heard the old man on the Friday evening. At first it was just an odd sound, floating down through the breezeway behind our apartment in this part of the Barri Gòtic of Barcelona. Something deep and resonant. We opened the bathroom window. After more careful listening, it was certainly a voice... quite guttural, almost as if from the devil himself. We had no idea what he was saying, but it was certainly a one sided conversation, interspersed with a laughter, perhaps slightly hysterical. This occured regularly, morning and evening, and became strangely familar during our 3 days and nights here. We're sure, now we've left, that his voice will continue to intrigue and puzzle many visitors to come.
So, Barcelona, another fantastic (too short) travel experience in Europe. We flew from Belfast International on Friday 14 March. We shared the Aer Lingus A320 with the “Shankill Junior Football Club” which made for an amusing trip, especially the 1 ½ hours sitting on the tarmac in Belfast waiting for the fog to lift in Barcelona as the (numerous) kids around us got more and more bored... But eventually we took off and the flight was quite smooth. Barcelona Airport is nice looking but the baggage handling was poor (1 hour from landing to carousel), which we've come to expect now in Europe – all the more reason to forget the check-in baggage and travel with roll-ons that exactly fit carry-on specifications, mmm, next time...
After some deliberation outside the terminal building (a typical Friday afternoon I would suspect), we ended up sharing a cab to Plaza Catalunya with an Irish couple. They were also on the same flight back on Monday.

- Story & photos to be completed -

Storm Of The Century, Part II

2008-03-10T19:36:00.002Z

This may, quite possibly, be one of our shorter blog entries. The wind howled, some rain came down and waves lashed along our sea wall, but there was no disaster last night. Everything was fine. It's probably better to have a prediction of bad weather than not be told at all. So, that was our storm of the century and all is well. Bye for now.

Storm Of The Century, Part I

2008-03-09T21:03:00.003Z

Tonight, the "Storm Of The Century" is hitting Ireland & Great Britain with 100kph+ winds and buckets of rain, all combined with a super high tide. But it hasn't reached us yet! The population has been asked to stay away from coastal areas, which is a little difficult for us as we live right on the coast. So wish us luck. More updates later!

Ireland puts forward a turkey

2008-02-25T14:37:00.012Z

I've always found the Eurovision Song Contest rather hard to swallow. Maybe Ireland have finally got the right idea with this crazy entry (which believe it or not, is actually dividing public opinion over here!)

Dustin the Turkey heads for Eurovision semis...
Dustin the Turkey will be representing Irish hopes at this year's Eurovision Song Contest semi-final after he won the public vote in the national Eurosong 2008 last night. Dustin saw off the challenge of the other finalists Donal Skehan, Mayo, Leona Daly, Liam Geddes and Marc Roberts, with his song 'Ireland Douze Pointe' at the University Concert Hall in Limerick. He will compete in the first Eurovision semi-final on May 20th in an bid to reach the finals on Saturday, May 24th.
© 2008 ireland.com

Almost March...

2008-02-24T23:14:00.009Z

The Coachmans Tavern had seen better days...

Frosty morning, Annagassan...

Always remember to take your Peugeots out of the freezer

We've had another pretty quiet weekend, making the most of sleeping in before some upcoming travels. Except I've had a cold/flu all week, which seemed to intensify on Saturday morning, so I set up the laptop sideways and did some DVD watching in bed, whilst despatching Clare to Tesco & LIDL for our weekly supplies... The Movies: This Is England, Die Hard 4 & Zodiac (but I didn't get as far as Zodiac). These were all from the "3 for €30 collection" from HMV (the nice people at DHL got me a €30 voucher for the Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords when I left there in December). Of course when men have a cold/flu, they're obviously dying, so must be taken care of. It was a lazy day, supported by Day & Night and Strepsils, but I felt better by Sunday so it must have worked.
It feels like winter is slowly easing away here - just the usual 4˚c at 5.30pm this afternoon and a little hail... We've had some good fog & frost this week too. Clare has been auditing & training in Ireland this week (no jetsetting), while I've been busy organising meetings and various upcoming projects in Dublin. I worked a little longer on 2 nights this week and came back on the "Belfast Enterprise", which is a very comfortable (luxury) 30 minute non-stop train journey from Dublin to Drogheda. I made the mistake of driving down on Friday. It's all fine until you hit the outskirts of Dublin, then you crawl, and crawl, and crawl... and remind yourself why the train is just so much better, regardless of how much it shakes around or the arts grant worthyness of the vandals who made an interesting creation the other day, centre carriage, from abandoned newspapers and some sort of red creaming soda... or maybe jam? The cleaners were in for a real job there.
Our travel plans for March/April/June could of course easily be thwarted by any number of strike plans over here, from cabin crew to mechanics, hell even the air traffic controllers who are demanding thousands of extra Euros, just for being on call for overtime. You gotta keep up, right? Yes, Aer Lingus staff are unhappy, British Airways staff are unhappy, Ryanair staff can get nicked if they're unhappy (thanks to Michael O'Leary), but nothing will function anyway if the air traffic controllers walk out, which they're threatening to do this Thursday, shutting down the entire country. Cool.
So if everything goes to plan, we'll be in Barcelona for 14-17 March, then Sue & Paul are here for Easter (we're heading for the Giants Causeway & Donegal), then Paris for 28-30 March, then Milan for 25-27 April, then BRISBANE for 13-28 June... Please don't ask about the carbon miles or whatever. We'll just have to act more responsibly in our next life.
Oh, we're also helping out on the Annagassan Viking Festival committee (9th & 10th August). Big things to happen right here in our little village!

Work Tales, Part II

2008-02-15T22:17:00.009Z

Clare has been jetsetting, as usual... San Francisco one week, Limerick the next! Tonight she's called me from Gatwick Airport, where her Ryanair plane seems to be blocked from the runway by an Aer Lingus plane (the Ryanair pilot would take delight in telling you that, I'm sure!) Such is life in the world of seafood training, etc, etc. So here's a little trip report that Clare sent to me from San Francisco (and I found rather amusing)...
"Had some problems getting onto the net, user issues as you would say! The weather was pouring rain last night - I thought I was in Dublin. Both flights (to San Fran) were empty and I had 3 seats all the way. I did MBA work, read magazines and didn’t get toxins at Newark (this refers to Joe's little food poisoning incident at Newark Airport last October, please don't ask!) The conference oragnisers had sent emails warning about not to walk around here at night and I thought they were being paranoid Americans but they were right. I'm sure I saw 2 homeless people in the lobby at 9pm and a woman straight out of ‘Pretty Woman’ in the lobby and again later in the hall near my room. Hispanic, large, high heels, loads of makeup and very short skirt. Almost laughable really. The hotel is very ‘LA Confidential’. I thought its best days were probably around 1951 or so but I read the hotel blurb and its heyday was around the 1890’s. One of the few buildings to survive the earthquake intact and became the City Hall for a few years after 1906 or whenever the big earthquake was. Whilst eating ‘breakfast’ at Starbucks, in the hotel lobby, I watched the homeless go thru the bins at 10am this morning. The hotel blurb in the rooms has 2 pages on security, 1 page on fire safety and 2 pages on earthquake safety - during and after...
I caught the BART to Sunita’s place (ex flat mate from Brisbane). It was the train to ‘Dublin’, would you believe? Sunita lives in a ‘transition’ neighbourhood in Oakland - loads of Central American families going to Mass, artists taking over factories and making real loft apartments - not a developers version of loft apartments... mosaics where graffiti used to be. Her husband was the architect on the apartment block where they live, so they got it cheaper. But the mortage on one wage is still tough, so Sunita was back at work 3 weeks ago and her Aussie mother-in-law is here for 9 months looking after their baby son. But they'll make a fortune in a few years when the neighbourhood turns white and professional. That said, M-I-L, Chris, says the drug deals regularly go down at the train station. We had breakfast - all healthy and no eggs benedict. Chris says I have a hint of an Irish accent. Hmmm, I doubt it! Chris lived in Cork for a while 4 years ago. So we swapped Irish stories...
Sunita says that San Fran & Manhattan are the only 2 places in the USA that don’t expect a recession and house prices are not collapsing. But her husbands company (architects) sacked a bunch of people last Friday and he's working Sunday and regularly doing 90 hour weeks. The TV here has ads for 1000 houses being auctioned next week in Modesto/Fresno, etc. (well outside San Fran), and all those places behind LA that are repo houses...
Reading the papers - there is more support here for Obama than Hillary. No one cares about the Republicans, but this is San Fran! It's Tet today, the Vietnamese New Year. So I'm off to find some Pho in a few minutes. I could go to a Superbowl party with the fish types, but I can’t miss Tet when it's about 2 blocks from the hotel. Bugger the homeless. etc...

And later...

I found the Law & Order channel on TV. This area is definitely the homeless epicenter. They're everywhere - lying on all the streets, sitting everywhere and there is diversity there as well. Men, women, black, white & Asian. Can you believe homeless Asian women? I don’t think I've ever seen that before. And I can now see why people thought I was homeless in 1999 - the homeless here have backpacks and sleeping bags and when you see them from a distance they do look like a group of backpackers. Some are quite young...
Tet was very interesting - very few food stalls. Only those weird jelly things, a few red bean buns and one Hawaiian kebab stall. Mostly stalls selling: dodgy Viet DVDs, plastic & glass things from a plastics factory in the Mekong delta, Viet charities, Uni scholarship programs, newspapers, nail places and florists. There was a big concert of some Viet band that was fairly huge. But the weirdest thing was the audience was 99 % Viet. A few hispanics and a few white men with their Viet girlfriends/wives. Only saw 2 other white women. And around the corner was a big YHA hostel. But it would seem no one from the YHA went to Tet ????? Found the Pho shops. Little Saigon is about as big as Darra - that’s all. I popped into a couple of shops - one selling loads of weird jellies and other meat products - not in refrigeration! Gave them a miss. Then to the little supermarket on the corner. Found a rack of Kettle Chips. Loads of different flavours. Bought 3 types of chilli chips - Spicy Thai, Island Jerk & Buffalo Bleu. Found a farmers market on the way back...
On Monday night we saw the Deadheads For Obama - the Grateful Dead got back together for a concert for Obama and all their supporters were walking around with signs, etc. No stickers for sale though :( Bill was down at the seafront in a building doing a live telecast to Hillary - in another state - for supporters to have a chat. We went to a fish factory for drinks & crab, then off in a cable car to Chinatown with the conference organiser, who grew up there. Nice enough dinner of Cantonese & Szechuan cuisine. Most others thought it was exotic...
Tuesday arvo I escaped and did tourist stuff - seals, aquarium and Fisherman's Wharf. That night was the conference dinner - okay food, terrible speaker. A few of us went to the bar and told our own after dinner auditor stories. Up again at 4am to go to the ‘seafood markets’ that didn’t exist. I did see some trawlers, seals, giant seagulls & rats. Then did my talk and dashed for the airport...
(Sorry, no photos from San Fran, didn't take the camera)

Work Tales, Part I

2008-02-14T21:24:00.000Z

I'm never quite sure how to start these blog entries. The concept of all this (back in 2006) was to be about our travel experiences, but then, of course, there is work (unless you're lucky enough that work is optional, or a mere afterthought)... So here I am again on the 6.59am to Dublin, where my Hewlett Packard office is located in a suburb called Clonskeagh, south of the city centre. The commuter trains, so far, have been pretty good (and very much on time), apart from the week a derailment happened between Drogheda & Dublin.
I absolutely love my new job. I loved my 11 years with DHL too, but this a brand new environment for me, where the team leaders self manage the workforce (of about 90 people) to a far greater extent than DHL. The building has rather good amenities with a cafeteria, coffee shop and gym, etc. I spend my days involved with: ensuring we meet our service levels, stats & performance management, learning the technical aspects of what we do (in our immediate area), organising & attending meetings, recruitment (from start to end of process), looking at morale & motivation, etc. There's always plenty to do, and of course HP is a huge global organisation in regards to future prospects. At 5pm, I literally run for the mini-bus, back to the station, where I get the 5.18pm back to Drogheda, then back home. So, that's a day for me right now.
I don't know if I'll ever get used to a 6am rise... but it happens, and as I drive down the lanes in the dark every morning (with my 4th new tyre on), there's nothing like knowing that train will leave the platform at 6.59am, whether you're on it or not...

.....f...o...g.....

2008-02-13T11:06:00.003Z

Amazing fog this morning... freezing, thick and no flavour (like a Mr Whippy)... Check out the pic at the top... That's in the middle of Dublin City, and even the webcam is "fogged out"... Looks like something from Dickens London. Temp is currently 1°c.

Slice of Ireland, No. # 77

2008-02-02T22:35:00.000Z

One of my tyres kept going flat. I think they call it a 'slow leaker'. Kind of inconvenient when I have to drive down to Drogheda Station at 6.30 every morning in the dark, be it raining, or frozen as it often is at the moment... Swerving along the country lanes, avoiding as many pot holes as possible, dashing through the middle of town avoiding the garbage trucks and milk deliveries, making it to the station in time for the 6.59am to Dublin, then rumbling along in the darkness listening to my Ipod, where conversations are kept low and most people try to get more shut eye. The same thing happens in reverse in the evening (dark again!) Everyone dashing for the exit at the station, trying to get home before their fellow commuters. And the same flat tyre is flatter still, so I creep the Peugeot the short distance from the train station to the service station to use the air machine, sometimes needing gloves, sometimes not (have you ever tried to get the screw cap off a tyre valve with gloves on?) So it was well and truly time to get a new tyre (or 2)...
Last Saturday afternoon whilst out shopping I discovered a place called First Stop Tyres... Very friendly, looked efficient, all good. I left the car with them and went off to look at some shops. They called me on my mobile. "You should consider 2 new ones on the front, and the one on the back..." Sure, I said yes to the 3, and thought nothing more of it. Back to collect the car a while later, and all was fine. Drove away thinking how good the service was. Roll forward a couple of mornings, raining again, slick roads, flat tyre... But the tyre shop had replaced 3 tyres on the car, right? Yes, 3 tyres out of 4, but not the 'slow leaker' which of course was the reason I went there in the first place. So much like many other unexplained mysteries here, I'll just have to go back and buy the 4th tyre too...
Clare went to San Francisco this morning on Continental. In fact, she's in the air right now as I write this, somewhere over Ohio, or Idaho, etc. You get the picture. I was hardly awake when she left this morning, much like she too is hardly awake when I leave for the station each morning in my car with the flat tyre. My morning commute is well worth it though, because I really love my new job at HP Dublin. Commuting to central Dublin by train is definitely the way to go when you hear the traffic reports on the radio every morning. Especially the days when the city grinds to a standstill (almost every day) thanks to some great motorway planning in the 1980's, when some of the pollies in Ireland were more concerned with collecting bags of money than ever believing that people would actually consider something like commuting (shock, horror), so the road (and rail) infrastructure in many parts is rather lacking. We're actually very lucky at Annagassan/Louth that we're in one one of the best served transport corridors around Dublin.
So Clare is back in Dubs on Thursday. I went up to Newry this evening to see the brilliant, if slightly baffling Coen Brothers "No Country For Old Men"... Thought about making it a double bill, but when confronted by the choice of "Cloverfield", "I Am Legend" and similar fodder, I decided to call it quits and head home. Now there would have been a time once when I might have happily sat through one of those movies, but perhaps my taste has matured and I couldn't stand the thought of another crap film. Tomorrow I'm off to Dubs for a Hash run. Bye for now.

Grey old January...

2008-01-21T08:59:00.004Z

flickr photo link: <Louise Bourgeois, Tate Modern>
We went for a walk down the Annagassan 'Esplanade' yesterday afternoon as the grey mottled sky was settling into black (at 5pm'ish!) 2 of our local dogs followed us down the shore, waiting for us to pick up sticks and throw them. This was after the morning mist (not quite a fog) had finally risen (by mid-afternoon)... It's a funny time of year. You gotta find things to do or the rain and greyscale might just drive you mad! Temperature wise, it's been pretty mild since the snow we had recently. Our days have hovered around 8-9c (almost t-shirt weather :), but with loads & loads of rain - soft rain, hard rain, sideways rain, etc. The other day, looking out from the 5th floor at work towards the Dublin Mountains (which had disappeared from sight), it almost seemed like a movie special effects scene, with sheets of water powered across the landscape by a large turbine fan. But there are no turbines... just wind and rain blowing in from the Atlantic, wave after wave...
This was our first weekend in Annagassan for a while now. We've had trips to the UK for the last couple of weekends (more El Cheapo Ryanair specials), to visit Leisa & Paul in the East End of London (with an afternoon at the Tate Modern), and then to visit my friend Chris from DHL Brisbane who was on holiday. Clare stayed on after that weekend to do a BRC Course in London too. We're quite used to doing the 'Gatwick' run on Ryanair now - excellent train connections to Central London, far less sticky carpets than Heathrow, and they've been pretty much on-time every time. Yes, we've really learned the positives & negatives of Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton & Stansted since we came over here, and we reckon Gatwick comes out on top (if you're heading into Central London). Back to Ryanair, their pilots are highly skilled at landing in Dublin, where you often feel the strong winds swaying the plane on final approach (after you've broken through the cloud layer). Nothing at all like Brisbane of course!
We took a trip to the shops at Newry on Saturday (Debenhams, Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer for those of you with a yearning for UK shopping!) We discovered a funky coffee shop too - they even had iced coffees. The Sterling is dropping in value (the UK papers are quite obsessed with recession on the horizon), and that makes it better and better for our Euro. We used to get about 66p for a Euro, now it's up to 75p. So shopping in the north (for a serious supermarket shop, or some clothes) is a pretty good move. They say the Euro might even hit 90p in 2008, and perhaps eventually hit parity with the pound (if the UK really keels over). Not sure what the Irish economy is doing, but they're lucky they jumped on the Euro bandwagon many years ago.

Suddenly Snow

2008-01-04T00:14:00.000Z

Photo Link: <Snow, 03 Jan 08>

We had some pretty significant snow this evening (03 Jan). I got off the train at Drogheda (now I'm commuting from my new job in Dublin), to be met by flurries of the white stuff - my car was completely covered. Made it home ok, then drove Clare back to Drogheda where blizzard-like conditions had set in, and our tyres soon lost traction, so we got out of there quick. Then the snow set in at Annagassan, but finished off before midnight. Certainly more snow then we've ever seen here before!

Some random photos from Drogheda...

2008-01-01T23:01:00.000Z

Photo Link: <Drogheda, Oct 07> Just some (very) random photos taken in Drogheda, County Louth (just down the road from us) on a Sunday afternoon in October 2007.

Photos from Christmas in Edinburgh...

2007-12-30T17:25:00.002Z

flickr photo link: <Christmas in Edinburgh, Dec 07> Some photos from our trip to Edinburgh!

A blogging Happy New Year!

2007-12-30T09:57:00.000Z

Hi everyone. Long time no blogging, so it's time for a major update. Well, it's about 8c today, slightly cloudy. I've just been up to the N.I. border to buy some fireworks for NY Eve from a shop in a big shipping container - they take Euros or Pounds (anything really, as long as it's cash!) Gerald & Sandra are here from Germany at the moment - they're checking out the touristic sights of Dublin today. Clare is downloading her email on the kitchen table. Just another day in Ireland!
So today you get all our news in one go. The (loose) definition of a blog is... "a frequently updated journal or diary", and we know we've kind of broken this rule, and we hope to start updating again more frequently as we go into 2008! We haven't written a whole lot since our trip to the USA in October (and we're still trying to finish those stories too)... Somehow our time has been filled. Straight from the top of my head, what's happened recently...?
- Clare finally submitted her MBA thesis, which has come back pretty quickly with edit requirements, etc. so will still need quite a bit more editing. Life wasn't meant to be easy! We went to the Dundalk Greyhound Stadium for Clare's work Christmas Party. Lot's of fun betting on the 'droopy' dogs. We even scored some wins!
- Joe has taken a huge step and left DHL Express after 11 years. What the? I'm starting a new role with HP Dublin (Clonskeagh) in January 2008 as a Technical Support Team Leader. For those of you that may have changed jobs recently, or considered it, or started into the process, it takes time and is quite mentally demanding - especially so after being with DHL for so long. But I'm really looking forward to it. A new role, new location, new challenges, more exercise :) Roll on 2008.
- We spent Christmas in Edinburgh with my cousin (well, relative cousin) Katherine & Chris and their daughter Isla. We had 9 people for Christmas day (Kiwi & Aussie friends joined in) - much ripping open of various presents & tonnes of chocolate gifts from Chris's school kids, plenty of turkey, brussels sprouts (yum), roast potatoes, Christmas pud, a various assortment of brandy creams & butters, chocolates, Port, Baileys, cheese, etc, etc. followed by a long game of Edinburgh Monopoly which ended in a draw (too many competing tycoons to reach a decisive conclusion!) We even cracked open our last bottle of Bundy Rum from Australia (even though you can actually buy it here, from Sainsburys!) Tastes pretty smooth after the local dark rums in Ireland. So overall a great day of consuming and relaxing. Hope you all had a good one too!
The weather here has been pretty mild overall - we've had a few frosty mornings (scraping ice off the windscreen), and some major rain here and there, but nothing too extreme. Certainly no freezing fogs like last year, although we really notice the difference in winter air quality here in Annagassan as opposed to Dundalk, where the coal & peat burning adds a certain "Dicken's" quality to the air.
Life in Annagassan has been mainly quiet as usual, bar one recent night when we heard sirens for the first time (ever) here, and a fire engine eventually screamed into our carpark. Seems a lady tenant had poured vodka into her own car and set it alight! The rain was pouring down that night, but the fire'ies still had to get it under control. Then the Garda eventually turned up to check out all the commotion. The car, quite charred inside, was left in the same spot when everyone left, and was still there days later. No surprises there.
Haven't had much of a chance to do any photography recently, but will get back into this when things settle down a bit. We're off to London on 06 Jan to meet up with Leisa & Paul for the day, then I've got another friend from DHL Brisbane in London the following weekend. Clare has upcoming work trips to Brussels, London & San Francisco. I guess you could call it the "soft" season right now... Europeans don't travel so much in winter and airfares are remarkably low.
What else? Well, wherever you are, or whatever you're doing, have a great New Years Eve and a happy & healthy 2008, and we hope to see you all soon. I'll be setting off those fireworks, after making sure all cats & dogs are well away, and doing my best not to lose an eye, or an arm (or someone else's!) Thanks for all the great emails from everyone with news of your lives too!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Tin Sandwich

2007-11-24T00:15:00.002Z

Check out our Friday night Irish Trad music buddies from the Glyde Inn Annagassan...
Presenting "Tin Sandwich", playing for Balcony TV Dublin...

The flaps on the plane go up and down...

2007-11-14T17:32:00.000Z

Honestly, we really didn't intend to become carbon unfriendly vandals... It just sort of, well, turned out that way. Admittedly, it has a lot to do with Ryanair and their ludicrously cheap fares that have made us well known at Dublin Airport, along with the other hordes of travellers dashing to the "portacabin gates", where we queue to board with our rolling luggage and packets of sandwiches - no more than a glorified bus depot really. The customs guys glancing at passports on Sunday night looked decidedly bored. In fact, one might have been resting his sleepy bloodshot eyes as my photo flashed before him. So there you are. Will I get to the point? Yes, well, we seem to be flying somewhere almost every weekend at the moment. Not that strange when you consider that flying to/from Dublin is literally cheaper than any other way to move either around, or off this little island (Ireland!) - the place we call home right now. We flew back from New York at the end of October, have just spent the weekend in the English Midlands (East Midlands Airport), and we're off to London for a same day return this Saturday, for cheaper than a couple of rounds at The Glyde Inn (where the craic has been very good on recent Fridays). Yes, Ryanair to London costs 10 Euros each way right now (1 cent fare plus €9.99 taxes!) In fact, €10 to many places in UK/Europe, but you have to really snout around for those €10 bargains to Frankfurt or Venice, etc. - those places that might be a bit more interesting than Birmingham or Leeds (nothing against Leeds, honest). So we're proud Ryanair warriors, with more miles racked up on 737's than our own cars. At this rate, we'll need to plant several hectares of trees if we're ever gonna make up for all this!
We had a lovely weekend in the Midlands... Stayed with my Aunt & Uncle, Anne & Andy and visited my cousin Nicki & family in their brilliant thatched roof house in the heart of the English countryside ... Had a couple of quick walks in the Peak District on Saturday, but the low cloud and rain was quite persistent... Excellent pubs of course. Winter is upon us now, and ice had covered our cars at home on Monday morning when Clare left for Cork at an ungodly early hour (to give a training course). But haha, my new car, a Peugeot 206 has anti-freeze in the windscreen spray, so I wasn't forced to scrape mine with a credit card... (It was still under 1c around 8.30am, brrr). Yes, the joys of winter in Europe. The bus strikes in Northern Dublin didn't help Clare and the M50 traffic - the papers say we're entering a "winter of discontent" in Ireland as workers hold out for more cash. What with Bertie forgetting where he got his bags of money from and the condition of the hospitals here, they sure could do with some good news stories.
Lot's of things happening here (my new 206 - I heart Peugeot... oh, and 2 new supermarkets opened in Dundalk, and the new "sushi train" place is about to open in Swords, just the 2nd in Ireland)... When we get a chance to sit down; and finish our photos from the USA; and write the stories to go with the photos, etc, etc. We just need to sit still for 5 minutes and stop looking at the Ryanair website, mmm. Now please ensure you fit the oxygen mask to your own face before assisting other passengers...

Those Halloween flashbacks...

2007-11-02T21:14:00.000Z

Photo Link: <USA photos, October 2007> (first edition, many more to be added!)
Hi all, we're back from the US (which was truly excellent) and back at work and all. After a pretty quick flight back from New York, a long good sleep on Sunday and the public holiday on Monday (for Halloween... yes, we get a holiday for Halloween here), things returned to normal. We'll update the blog (backdated) with all of our stories and photos from the USA soon - it just takes time of course.
Halloween night here was just amazing. This was the first time in recent years I haven't done a party or costumes or theme parks, etc, etc. We just wanted to soak up the Irish Halloween atmosphere, and we weren't disappointed! Thanks to the mass sale of fireworks to the public (from large shipping containers on the N.I. border - Euros or Sterling accepted!) there were rockets going off everywhere. Driving home along the M1 was like memory flashbacks to WWI or WWII, as things whizzed and banged over every tiny village and settlement in Ireland - white light and booms on the horizon and flashing in the sky. We've never seen anything quite like it. A sulphur fog had descended over Dunleer as the local youths spinned their car tyres and set off whiz bangers in the direction of the local supermarket. In Annagassan, the kids had constructed a massive bonfire of pallets on the wasteland next to the fishing wharf. It burned like an Iraqi oilwell. Not sure what the ignition substance was, but nitroglycerin comes to mind or maybe just good old petrol. After the July bonfires in the north and Halloween down here, we think CHEP pallets should come and investigate where all their pallets are disappearing to in Europe. Look no further. Sorry, no photos tonight!
Back to the pub tonight to see if the trad music is still on. Winter is slow coming this year.
Chills & Thrills for another year... :) Joe.

New York, New York...

2007-10-29T17:05:00.002Z

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>

Under construction...

New York, New York

Your friendly Wyoming law enforcement...

2007-10-25T23:40:00.002+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>
Under construction...
Lander, Wyoming Highway Cops, Vail & Denver

The world of Yellowstone...

2007-10-23T23:05:00.001+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>

Under construction...

Yellowstone National Park

Devils Tower Wyoming

2007-10-22T23:14:00.006+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>
Without gushing superlatives, this was a very special part of our trip. Ever since first watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" many, many years ago (then plenty of times since), I'd wanted to see the Devils Tower for myself. One of those all-time movie location holy grails. But Wyoming is one of those difficult places to get to. It's not like getting on a plane to Los Angeles or New York. You have to plan a journey, rent a car. You have to approach the tower, drive around it, see it from different angles, get the dawn & dusk views. It is wonderous, spectacular - different in it's physical aspect from how I'd imagined, and possibly somewhat smaller than imagined too, but sheer and mystical all the same. From outside the monument, I pictured every view of the tower from the perspective of the movie lens - putting every scene into place. We had a truly wonderful afternoon and morning here. You can't spend much more time than that really, as the activities are limited and you soon discover the location is quite remote really. There isn't a whole lot else around!
Devils Tower is a National Monument, entry US$10 for 7 days. You'll probably spend a few hours or a day, unless you want to study the prairie dogs and take every back country hike. On our first afternoon, we drove up to the visitor centre and took a quick walk up to the rock. Being off season, there was hardly anyone here. After checking things out, we parked beside a hill outside the monument, and I took loads & loads of sunset photos while I slowly froze. But it was all worth it. We ate some chips & dips and marvelled at the whole thing. Back into the car, and a short distance back to the Best Western Devils Tower Inn at Hulett. Looking like a log cabin on steroids, this was a very nice & very new motel with huge rooms and really comfortable beds. Highly recommended. If you blink, you'll miss Hulett (pop. 408). We had a burger at little tavern just down the street, then slept well while the aliens made their plans round the back of the tower, in the darkness...

After a waffle breakfast, we were back at the tower. We did the circuit walk around the base. Again, there were few people around. Some climbers sauntered past us on the path, then we watched as they scaled the east face. They looked like little ants in 'The North Face' jackets. Our experience was over, and we left the monument between 11 and 12, saying goodbye to the prairie dogs on the way out! We had a massive drive ahead of us.

South Dakota to Wyoming

2007-10-21T22:35:00.000+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>

We left the Black Hills today, but only after a fun morning at Bear Country USA, a drive through wildlife park where bears (and other animals) literally tussled in front of our car then plonked themselves down in the road, so it was careful going. The bears could smell food in our car too. I didn't want to explain that damage story to the rental car people! They also had a zoo section with cute baby animals, including red foxes. The park was almost deserted being so late in the season, but the website says they're open until the end of November.

Back on the I-90, we headed northwest towards Deadwood. This was a slightly weird frontier town in the hills, famous for the gold rush days - Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and a recent tv series (which didn't show in Australia as far as I know). Whilst quite historic and well detailed, nowadays Deadwood is famous for casinos and all-you-can-eat buffets, so we drove through quickly and kept driving as we could see snow further up the mountain. Just past the town of Lead, things had turned white all around and we pulled into a forest to throw some snowballs (the crazy Aussies seeking out snow wherever we go!) We came down the mountain via the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, a wonderful drive made all the more spectacular by the snow in the trees. We were quite lucky there.

We joined the I-90 again at the town of Spearfish and crossed the state border from South Dakota to Wyoming. We'd already decided to stop at the next town of Sundance. However, as we drove along the quiet main street, we soon discovered this was not the Sundance famous for the film festival. We really should have done our research! So, with Sundance devoid of food (bar the local service station) and the Devils Tower a little over an hour away across the Bear Lodge Mountains, we decided to backtrack to Spearfish for a food stop. Just off the I-90 we found another American family diner with good food, endless drink refills and impossibly low prices (especially compared to Ireland). After the refreshment stop we drove back into into Wyoming again, and approached the Devils Tower from the northeast side (Belle Fourche & Hulett). Looking back, we could never say we didn't cover these roads thoroughly!

It's raining in Rapid City

2007-10-20T22:39:00.009+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>

It's raining in Rapid City, South Dakota. We stopped for dinner this evening at Red Lobster on the I-90, where dinner comes in 3 sizes - big, bigger & biggest, much like the eager patrons. Clare ran across the wet carpark to Target (none in Ireland!) to buy some clothes, while I waited in the restaurant lobby with the buzzer that vibrates when your table is ready. About 25 minutes later it went off, and we chose our delicious seafood meals & cocktails, which came in the same gigantic sizes as the meals (my strawberry Lobsterita was exceptional!) We had a friendly table visit from the manager, Kent French, who wanted to talk to the only Australians in town that night and told us he was a world "clapping" champion, video here. Nice guy! I finished up my Lobsterita as the people on the next table were offered another plate of endless shrimp... We drove back across the hills to our lovely hotel, the Holiday Inn Express Keystone (about US $58/nt) and hit the sack.

We'd started the previous day collecting our Hertz Rental Car at Denver Airport. Flicked on the Sat Nav and headed north on the I-25 past Loveland & Fort Collins, Colorado - with huge RV sales yards and shopping malls on the highway. Traffic thinned out as we entered Wyoming. We stopped for food nr. Cheyenne - BIG food & huge trucks in the parking lot with gun racks & "hunter" bumper stickers. This was the real American homeland - wide open spaces and about as far away from Washington DC or Seattle as you can get! It was getting dark as we kept going north, eventually climbing in elevation as we left Wyoming and entered the far southwest corner of South Dakota (our forth state for the day!) We got to Keystone late that night.

When it comes to blurbs about tourist towns, sometimes the local tourist authorities put it best, so here you go: Keystone... The “Home of Mount Rushmore” and truly a “City of Gold”. Rich in gold mining history the quaint town of Keystone is just two miles from Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Once a gold mining boomtown and later the location of the monumental carving of Mount Rushmore, Keystone was also the adult home of Carrie Ingalls of “Little House on the Prairie” fame. With all this to offer who needs more? But there is a lot more. There are historic and Presidential museums where you can learn about the history of Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum – Sculptor of Mount Rushmore, United States Presidents, Keystone and Carrie Ingalls. An alpine slide and Tramway with great views of Mount Rushmore and the surrounding area; an actual gold mine that you can tour and then learn to pan for gold; a Historic 1880 Train ride that takes you through some of the most beautiful Black Hills scenery around; beautiful caves that boast some of the largest formations around, and a Historic Walking tour that takes you on a trip back in time!

It was well & truly off season in Keystone and things were really quiet. We waited a while for service in the local diner to get some breakfast. Then straight up to Mount Rushmore (annual parking pass US $8). An attractive family of rocky mountain goats were munching on the plants in the multi-storey carpark (this place was really built for summer crowds). We took lots of photos of course. Mount Rushmore is suitably impressive like all the pictures you see, but we were told the nearby Crazy Horse Monument was better, although it has decades of blasting and chiselling to go before any sign of completion. Anyway, we did the little walking circuit under the Presidents' faces and admired this patriotic salute to all things American. Time to move on.

We headed down from the Black Hills towards Badlands National Park and made stops on the way, firstly to talk to a rancher, Ken Wilson, who had 5,000 head of cattle on 40,000 acres. We'd stopped at the end of his driveway to take some pics of the fall foliage. Like so many other friendly people we came across, I guess they were happy to chat with anyone that stopped, especially Australians! At the next settlement (ghost town!) of Scenic, Clare was given a little history by a first nation guy sitting outside the local store. The glory days of Scenic had long since passed, and this was literally a tumbleweed town where we expected to see Wylie Coyote chasing the roadrunner down the street with some Acme TNT. We gave the guy a few bucks and carried on.

The weather was doing weird things as we drive across the amazingly flat South Dakota landscape towards Badlands. The towns out here along the I-90 started to resemble what you might imagine of the American "outback" - dusty, trailer park homes, quite rundown, etc. We established pretty quickly we definitely wouldn't want to live out here. This is the area where America once kept it's "Minuteman" longrange nuclear missiles, but the vistor centre was closed so we moved on. The open air Prairie Homestead along the road was also closed for the season (it looked abandoned), so we scaled the fences to take a look around. Lots of cute prairie dogs popping their heads out of their burrows. We tore off into Badlands and made a few scenic stops along the way. Thick cloud had moved across now, and any hint of the fabulous colours that this area is famous for were well and truly washed out. But the views were still amazing and it was worth the drive. Rain & darkness were falling as we took the I-90 back into Rapid City, past Ellsworth Air Force Base, more trailer park homes and finally to our table at the Red Lobster... God Bless America!

Elvis does his stuff

2007-10-18T23:45:00.008+01:00

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>
After a couple of days in Las Vegas, we'd settled in. Well, as much as having Bloody Mary's for breakfast is settling in to anywhere. Hey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas! Our hotel room facing the strip had a wonderful view, but absorbed the full cacophony of wailing sirens 24 hours a day and sightseeing helicopters returning to the nearby Airport in a constant stream like the evacuation of Saigon. Nice. We soon met Mahia & Trent (and various friends & family members) and started planning some little activities, all leading up to their afternoon wedding at "A Little White Chapel" at the other end of the strip. We all hit the factory outlet stores (outstanding value for clothes & shoes) and a bunch of us had a very entertaining time at the Madame Tussauds Las Vegas. We poked some good fun at George Bush and got a great pic with Elvis (the first of our Elvis experiences). This was located at The Venetian, which, while spectacular in it's own right (along with other Vegas casinos), does not replicate Italy. As much as I can be a philistine of fine arts, even I can see the value in visiting the real historical places in our world (like Italy), versus the Las Vegas or theme park version. In the mean time, Clare was enjoying the poolside cocktails and catching up on yet more work. We had a brilliant 2nd Anniversay dinner at Sushi Roku Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. After missing sushi in Ireland this was truly superb - sashimi, soft-shell crab, lobster, yet more cocktails, etc... in a "Blade Runner" Meets Ginza interior design... A bit dark for reading the menu but all very good with friendly service.
The afternoon of the wedding rolled around, and we all made our way to "A Little White Chapel" for the ultimate Las Vegas wedding. I knew this place had old movie star folklore, but it was far smaller and pokier than one might have expected - but all part of the experience. We eventually filed into the small chapel (would fit maybe 20 people max.) and an Elvis impersonator opened the proceedings with "Viva Las Vegas", followed by another quick number while the webcam was activated... Australia, you're live! Mahia wore a red Chinese dress with Trent in a black suit. The wedding celebrant was a funny little lady - not sure if there was much scripting to it all. Vows were exchanged, another famous number from Elvis, a few photos, and things were wrapped up. As the next wedding started inside, we all congregrated outside watching the girls on the swings over the road under the giant NUDE sign. We took the a stretch limo ride back to the Excalibur, with the driver telling us about his most famous customers. That night we ventured out through more smoky casino floors to "Gonzalez Y Gonzalez" at New York New York for plastic souvenir yardglasses filled with frozen margaritas (I still have mine!) and obscenely large plates of Mexican food. Very Las Vegas...
The next morning we braved our way through the TSA security processing and had breakfast at the Airport. I had my final win on the slots (Star Wars), and we flew off to Denver with United Airlines. That's enough of Vegas for another few years!

Viva Las Vegas!

2007-10-17T22:30:00.013+01:00

USA blogs, October 2007:
1. Viva Las Vegas!
2. Elvis does his stuff
3. It's raining in Rapid City
4. South Dakota to Wyoming
5. Devils Tower Wyoming
6. The world of Yellowstone...
7. Your friendly Wyoming law enforcement...
8. New York, New York...

flickr photo link: <USA, Oct 07>
15 Oct 07 CO127 DUB/EWR 1045/1305
15 Oct 07 CO1468 EWR/LAS 1615/1847
19 Oct 07 UA1610 LAS/DEN 1100/1356
26 Oct 07 CO629 DEN/EWR 1225/1810
27 Oct 07 CO126 EWR/DUB 2155/0825+1
Well here we are at the centre of decadence in the western world, and Las Vegas is still well and truly living up to the hype! From the astonishingly huge themed casinos to the endless magic & Cirque Du Soleil shows, Vegas is still pulling them in thanks to slick marketing and a genuine wow factor. We're staying at Excalibur (around US $100/nt but varies massively), and with 4,008 rooms this is the 7th largest hotel in the world. Thankfully, we don't think it's quite full right now! Punters play in the smoky air-conditioned comfort of the casino floor (more than 100,000 square feet) and feed money into the slot machines, then retreat to the myriad of food options including 24 hour McDonald's & Krispy Kreme Donuts, etc, etc. Clare and I have successfully avoided the junk however, and had some some of the best sushi we've ever had at Suski Roku, where everything is flown in daily (more in the next update). So each casino is a slight variation of the next - the outside might be Caesar's or Venetian or Paris, etc. and the rooms might be more plush, but the same smoky darkness and bling-bling machines dominate every design.
I find Vegas very interesting as I first came here in my travel industry days (early 90's). Many of the older casinos have been demolished, leaving huge dusty sites along the strip, and the city is well and truly in the grips of another casino building boom. Everything being built seems to appeal to a hip new demographic, which seems strange as the average age of visitor this week seems like 50+. Certainly the "family" pitch which existed a few years back seems to have disappeared, with less fun park rides now, replaced by more designer shops and casino floor space. Gambling revenues are still the key to the existence of this city. People stroll along the strip each night with their souvenir cups filled to the brim with frozen margaritas, while hordes of marketing canvassers flog time share with "free" shows and cards for call girls. But sorry, no such thing as free round here. And of course once you get away from the strip you quickly see a more real side to Vegas, cookie-cutter apartment blocks sprawled across the desert floor to support the 100's of 1000's of low income service workers here.
Now we're in Vegas as my friends Mahia & Trent are getting married here. So more on that in the next blog update. Bye for now!

..// Shadee Acres \\.. 2004

2007-09-29T23:05:00.000+01:00

Photo Link: <..// Shadee Acres \\.. 2004 photos>
Video Link: <YouTube video... "Welcome To Shadee Acres">
With Halloween 2007 coming up fast (Halloween is REALLY big in Ireland), it was time to get the old stuff onto flickr... so here are some great memories from 2004 - the "Shadee Acres" Halloween Party at Wavell Heights...

Always trust the local guy

2007-09-29T19:42:00.000+01:00

A gentle mist has descended tonight. That was after the soft rain today. There was really great trad music on the car radio as I took an early evening dash to Tesco's to buy some lightbulbs, to replace all the one's in our apartment that simultaneously blew this week... But apart from the lightbulbs blowing, it's been a good week, where Clare and I have both been quite busy. I suppose it's taken us a while in Ireland, but between Clare's work, and my involvement now in photography & trips with the Hash and other things going on, we feel like we 'belong' a bit more than before. We're constantly learning (and it does take time), how things work here, and there's somewhat a sense of community emerging in Annagassan too.
So the trusty Nissan Almera has got a few more miles left in her yet, according to the local mechanic at Dunleer who installed a new radiator for just 180 Euros (which is an absolute bargain I can tell you - I was quoted 100 Euros just to get the car towed out of Dunleer!) Now she drives better than before - mmm, I guess that swiss cheese radiator may have been causing problems for a while (in hindsight). While going through my own car "withdrawal", I rented a car for a week from Budget for 100 Euros. A great little black 5 door Polo that went quite fast on the motorway (hhmm). If you're planning on coming to the UK or Ireland and renting a car, you must, must check out this site - http://www.travelsupermarket.com/. This seems to be THE BEST price comparison site in Europe for car rental, hotels, flights, etc. Even flights from the UK to Australia can be compared here. Clare's boss couldn't believe that you could rent a car for a week for 100 Euros (about AUD 160) - and that was all inclusive too, no catches. I don't think you'd get a car for a week in Brisbane for that. But when it comes to travel bargains, of course nothing really beats Ryanair over here, where you can regularly get 20 Euro return flights to London (well under AUD 40) - that's the TOTAL fare!
Got some good feedback on my 6 photos at the photo comp the other night. There was some really great beginner work, needless to say I didn't win (I didn't expect to), but my highest scoring photo was Siena Window, which I think got a 9 (out of 10) from one of the judges. My 6 entries were pretty much 'point and shoot' efforts, and while the quality of cameras are improving and everyone is becoming an expert, you still need to know about the basics of photography - composition, light, shutter speeds, etc. So I have lots of learning to do. Sorry no new photos to add to this blog tonight, as I haven't had the time to take any more!
Only 2 weeks to go before the Australian Leprachaun's hit Vegas & Wyoming...

Tales of the week...

2007-09-27T15:26:00.000+01:00

(photo credit: http://www.ruralgateway.org.uk/)

Autumn is well and truly upon us. The days are brilliant blue sky but it gets positively frosty as darkness falls. The grit trucks were out on the motorway last night and the temperature was 4.7c on our bedroom windowsill this morning, so it's time to rug up for winter. The fireworks places on the border have cranked up too, and shops are stocked with Halloween stuff. The whole fireworks thing is really weird as you're likely to hear the whiz and bang of a rocket being let off at any time, any place, from now till New Year!
The radiator in my car literally disintegrated late last week. I was driving up the M1 onramp about 10 minutes from home when steam started billowing out. There wasn't just one hole in it... it looked more like a smashed up honeycomb (eg. LOTS of holes!) So I managed to coast and hop the car down to a small town called Dunleer (about 1km away), then took the bus to Swords instead. We found the local mechanic on the weekend by asking people outside the pub. So that's where the old Nissan Almera is this week... Well, it does have 147,000 miles on the clock so we're looking at the options of getting a newer car, and I've got a rental car for the week in the meantime.
Clare has been in Dublin all week for the World Seafood Congress 07. Busy, busy, perhaps finding time for a tipple of rum or two with the Aussie visitors in the evening!
Not so many tractors on the road this week as the National Ploughing Championships are on (the equivalent of the Ekka in Brisbane). Loads of exhibitors, trade village & food and of course LOTS OF PLOUGHING! Couldn't see it for myself as they have it midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday) and we definitely don't get a holiday for it!
Bye all.

Planning, planning...

2007-09-20T08:26:00.000+01:00

Colorado, Wyoming... Too many miles? I just can't help planning, and Google Maps makes it too easy. Got to see Mount Rushmore, Devils Tower, etc, etc... Clare says one day she's going to book a trip for us that will be truly spontaneous and unplanned... What the?

Change Of Season...

2007-09-20T00:50:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update this week, as we really didn't do a whole lot over the last weekend. Even the pub was quiet on Friday night. Clare is still working away furiously on her MBA, and I'm really getting into photography, having joined the Drogheda Photographic Club and getting my entries together for my first competition (for new or non-advanced photographers!) Those 6 entries are blogged directly from flickr following this post, which reminds me I really need to take some more Irish Pub Of The Week photos (I've fallen way, way behind with those), but I might also be helping out with a bit of an experimental photographic project in Drogheda in the next couple of weeks too...
On the homefront, the leaves are starting to fall from the trees and it hit 5 degrees the other morning. Signs of the months to come, after such a great summer (ok, an Irish summer!) The cockle pickers have been digging away on the Annagassan mudflats at low tide. We're pretty sure it's a commercial operation, and the workers are bussed in from somewhere. Starting to make plans for Christmas, etc.
Trust all is good in Brisbane town or wherever you are right now!

Angel

2007-09-20T00:45:00.000+01:00

Angel
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Barajas

2007-09-20T00:40:00.000+01:00

Barajas
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

HCMC Kid

2007-09-20T00:35:00.000+01:00

HCMC Kid
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Siena Window

2007-09-20T00:30:00.000+01:00

Siena Window
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Stream

2007-09-20T00:25:00.000+01:00

Stream
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Tube

2007-09-20T00:20:00.000+01:00

Tube
Originally uploaded by clare&joe

Mystery Bus HHH

2007-09-11T12:14:00.001+01:00

BBQ "On The Rocks" at The Saltings, Annagassan
(please click on this photo for a larger version)

Photo Link: <Dublin HHH (Mystery Bus Trip), 09 Sep 07 photos>
Time: 2pm Sunday afternoon; Location: the end of a lane somewhere in the backblocks of County Down, Northern Ireland (bandit country until a few years back); Problem: have you ever attempted a 3 point turn in a 35 seater bus in a narrow country lane? Perhaps not. But the enthusiasm of the hashers (possibly alcohol fuelled) got us through, even though "Bernie The Bus" (our driver) had a little trouble finding the reverse gear (crunch)... This was our Mystery Bus trip to Mullingar, which of course didn't go anywhere near Mullingar. But Clare and I knew one of the destinations very well (as we helped to set the trail), but that was still to come later in the day...
Chris & Shay came up to Annagassan on Friday night so we started the weekend with another trad session at The Glyde Inn. A couple of different musicians turned up and the music was excellent as always, with some brilliant blues too. Saturday morning and Chris & Shay left to set the first trail (the location of which was kept secret from us of course). When they returned later in the day, Clare and I learned the finer points of Hash trail setting, using shredded paper, flour and chalk...

The Annagassan trail started on the road coming into the village from Castlebellingham: false trail on the seashore, up the hill (onto the rath), past the hay bales and the water tower, down the hill, false trail to the end of the harbour wall, under the bridge, along the river, over a stile and across a cow paddock (be careful of the electric fence), across a harvested wheat field, false trail along the esplanade, clamber down the rocks, along the beach, diversion around the pub... (exhausted yet?), finally ending up in front of The Saltings. I think we did a good job! After we set the trail we headed down to Parnell St (Dublin) for some Asian food. Clare had crab and said it was one of the best meals she's had in Ireland! We stayed the night at Chris & Shay's place, so we could board the mystery bus with everyone else on Sunday morning...

Everyone made it to the bus (10am'ish) and we headed north out of Dublin taking plenty of diversions along the way including Ballymun (keep going driver) & 360˚ loops around roundabouts, etc. but still ended up on the M1. We took bets on Slane or Carlingford but steamed right past those motorway exits and were soon in Northern Ireland where we took a left turn through Jonesborough (the locals were not amused by our coach squeezing through the market day traffic). We finally reached Hawthorn Hill Forest (Slieve Gullion) for the first trail of the day. After the trail (and beer & snacks), we boarded the bus again and promptly got lost (refer to paragraph 1!) Finally followed a kind driver out of the woods, toilet stop at Camlough, diesel stop at Dundalk, then onto Annagassan where we quickly kicked off the second trail (refer to paragraph 3!)

This was all followed by a BBQ on the rocks right in front of our building. Then we waved everyone goodbye as they drove back to Dublin (well after 6pm I think). There was still a case of beer left at that stage. Another great hash adventure.

flickr photo updates

2007-09-10T20:33:00.000+01:00

Just a few more flickr photo updates. We now have 2,309 photos online with thousands of individual picture views. This was really pushed along by our Rolling Stones pics. I've also joined the nearby Drogheda Photographic Club in the hope of enhancing my skills!
So these photo folders all had major updates in the last week or so:
Photo Link: <2007... A year in Annagassan>
Photo Link: <Aviation at DUB Airport 07>
Photo Link: <Clare's USA Trip 99> (getting lots of comments on these)
Photo Link: <New York, Oct 03>
Photo Link: <Our Top 20 Most Interesting Pics>
Bye.

Photography Nut (and Movie Nut)...

2007-09-05T00:29:00.000+01:00

Making hay while the sun shines in Annagassan, 02 Sep 07

(please click on this photo for a larger version)

While Clare is slaving away on her MBA, Joe is doing a bit of a personal project (instead of watching 200 channels of nothing on Sky TV)... to get ALL of our digital photos into flickr (they go back to 2001, with some scanned from earlier too)... My first digital camera was a little 1 Megapixel Kodak (please don't ask how much it cost back then). That camera has gone to Phoebe now (my niece), but I'm sure it ended up in a dusty box somewhere. Of course it could be used as a good paperweight. Anyway, flickr is probably about the best online community I've found yet (with the possible exception of the Sydney planespotters!) You receive (and give) feedback on photos, and they have meet-ups too. You start to learn a lot about what makes a good photograph (or maybe what everyone thinks is good photography!)

So we have another album online now:
Photo Link: <New York, October 2003 photos>
This was part of a bigger trip we took back then, and I'll put the rest up soon.
Also putting some movie reviews onto the SBS Movie Show website (at their invitation), so look out for me - it's a good website to visit too if you want to know what's on at the movies.
Bye from Joe & Clare.

Photo updates from 2001

2007-09-01T23:47:00.000+01:00

We've uploaded 3 sets of photos from 2001 into flickr:
Photo Link: <Vietnam (colour), July-August 2001 photos>
Photo Link: <Vietnam Black & White, July-August 2001 photos>
Photo Link: <Long Tan Memorial, Vietnam, 18 August 2001 photos>
-----
All quiet in Ireland this week. Not much to report!

Movie Review - The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-09-01T22:08:00.000+01:00

Movie Review - The Bourne Ultimatum (on my Movie-Nut Blog).

The last word from The Rolling Stones...

2007-08-28T14:51:00.001+01:00

Our review of the Rolling Stones at Slane Castle is finished now...
Slane was one of the last shows of their 2005-2007 world tour (they ended up in London). Will they be back? The last word today from website PR-inside.com...
THE ROLLING STONES WILL 'NEVER QUIT'
ROLLING STONE RONNIE WOOD has laughed off reports the legendary band are planning to quit touring - insisting they will carry on performing until they drop. It was recently claimed the band's current A Bigger Bang Tour would be their last, because bandmembers Sir Mick Jagger, 64, Keith Richards, 63, Charlie Watts, 66, and Wood, 60, will be too old to hit the road again. But the guitarist insists, "We need a rest, but of course we will tour again. We'll never stop."
So there you have it!

Glyde Inn trad music...

2007-08-25T23:50:00.000+01:00

Trad music at The Glyde Inn, Annagassan (YouTube video)

Video Link: <YouTube video of trad music at The Glyde Inn>
The music at our local, The Glyde Inn Annagassan was just outstanding last night. Particularly "Dirty Old Town" with the harmonica ending... WOW! (sorry we didn't record that one)... but we did record another 6 minute clip (uploaded on YouTube) - Now it's really NOT visually stunning, but have a listen and the clip maybe gives a sense of the depth of talent here on Friday night's now - there were 2 fiddles, 3 guitars, harmonicas & squeeze box and the French sax guy by the end of the night... Brilliant. My ability to capture these sounds (and vision) is limited to my little 4MP digital camera (designed for happy snaps), so I know the sound quality ain't great. Clare discovered a new bottle of rum behind the bar, but apparently it's pretty special and will probably never get opened while we're here. So Clare will tolerate the "Captain Morgan" for now... and I will be content with a pint of cider or two. Thanks Connor...
It's been much warmer here in the last few days. Much less rain. Good. Bye then...