Matt and Kat Brown

Our Scotland jaunt started last night when arrived at Prestwick Airport after only a short delay from our Ryan Air flight. We picked up our hire car and made it into Glasgow for the night without incident. Our hotel room for the night  (Ibis) was serviceable (and a carbon-copy of the room layout of the Ibis hotel in Bratislava!) if not particularly cozy and we were glad to get on the road in the morning.

We picked up a pay-as-you-go 3G internet pack in Glasgow so that we could use Google Maps and some navigation applications in conjunction with the GPS on the new Android phone that Matt got for Christmas from Google. While Kat battled with the 3G modem Matt took a wrong turn and ended up driving for 30 minutes in completely the wrong direction! Eventually we managed to get both the 3G and our bearings sorted out and got out of the Glasgow area (in the right direction this time) just before lunch. Having the GPS and Google Maps as we drove along was very interesting and useful, although the Internet eventually cut out as we got into the really nice scenery leaving us with just the GPS.

The landscape was beautiful, lots of lochs, grand mountain scenes and plenty of frost on the ground. We were glad for our hats and gloves! We had come prepared and managed to find and log 2 out of the 2 geocaches that we attempted along the way. By 3:30 it was starting to get dark and we were only just half way to Inverness. We captured some beautiful sunset photos looking west across Loch Linnhe around 4pm and then drove the rest of the way to Inverness (alongside Loch Ness) in the dark and gloomy fog. No sign of Nessie!

Stay tuned for more news tommorrow (maybe, depending on time and internet access :p)!

Another year is nearly at an end. It’s been a good year for us (and a busy one) with plenty of highlights and very few lowlights!

We’ll be enjoying a quiet Christmas day this year, making phone calls back home, eating some good food and packing for our flight on the 26th when we’re off to Scotland. We’re taking a week to see the sights and enjoy the celebrations in Edinburgh on New Years Eve. It’s going to be cold, very very cold - or so we hear from everyone we’ve mentioned the trip to! We’re hoping for a few days of fine weather - especially for the fireworks on New Years and so Matt can get in a few good photo shoots with his new tripod and the digital SLR camera.

We sent out our Christmas newsletter this week. If you haven’t received a copy already we’re sorry and it’s not intentional. Most likely we just don’t have your correct email address in our list. If  you’d like to receive (very) sporadic email updates from us then just send us an email to say ‘hi’ - then we’ll have your address and we can add you to the list

We’ll keep you posted with more news of our travels in the New Year. Sending out Christmas goodwill to everyone and hoping you all have an enjoyable and not too stressful Christmas break.

Nolliag Shona Duit (Merry Christmas) !

On the way to our work Christmas party earlier in the week, I was discussing the state of public transport in Dublin with a colleague and he suggested I watch this video, made four years ago, that nicely summarises transport in Dublin.

I enjoyed it, hopefully you will too:

It’s now four years after that video was made, and I could only see one aspect of it that has improved in that time. The busses now accept a smart card so you don’t have to carry the exact change every day, except there are a limited number of smart card types available so you end up paying more than your usual fare if you want to use one for a short trip, and they are not rechargeable, so you have to buy a new one every week.

Dublin Transport. Not There Yet.

Despite that, I’ve been really enjoying Dublin the last few weeks, and it is not like any New Zealand city really has any sort of decent public transport either!

I got back from San Francisco (or Mountain View just below San Francisco to be precise) last Thursday afternoon, just in time to take Kat out to dinner for our fourth wedding anniversary. It was a nice welcome home after almost four weeks away. During dinner we were discussing that in June next year it will be exactly 10 years since we started dating! How time flies when you are having fun. We are looking forward to many more enjoyable years to come.

Luckily I wasn’t too jet lagged as we were straight back into enjoying things on Saturday evening hosting a bunch of friends for a NZ Party. We originally planned the party for later in November to introduce Irene to a few ‘typical’ NZ dishes as she is heading off to Wellington in a few weeks but when we realised that the All Blacks were playing Ireland in Dublin this weekend we really couldn’t pick any other date for it. Sadly for our friends the game didn’t go their way, but we had a great evening anyway and Kat cooked some delicious food that was enjoyed by all.

Photos from our trip to New York and the NZ Party can be found below (I was too busy working while in San Francisco to take any pictures worth sharing).

• New York - Photos
• New York Halloween Parade - Photos
• NZ Party - Photos

I’ve been in New York for work for the last two weeks as you should already know from Kat’s last post and happily she was able to join me for the second week. We had a great time visiting many of the typical tourist attractions together.

See her previous post for the details of the first two full days we had sightseeing. For the rest of the week, I worked all day while Kat worked mornings and acted like a tourist in the afternoons. That left the evenings free for us to pick off a few more sights. In order:

Tuesday: We took the Staten Island ferry across to Staten Island. Staten Island itself was nothing particularly interesting, the point of the ferry ride was to look at the Statue of Liberty in the harbour that you go past half way across. It was a very dark, stormy and rainy night, so not particularly conducive to good viewing, but we managed to get enough of an impression to be satisified. The highlight of the evening however was dinner, at a wonderful bar called “Garage Bar” near the bottom of 7th street where we had wonderful food and live jazz music led by Valery Ponomarev.

Wednesday: We had a quiet meal in our apartment and then ventured out to the Empire State Building around 9pm. We’d read that the queues were much quieter at this time and sure enough we got straight up to the top with no waiting and enjoyed spectacular views of New York by night and the many many aeroplanes that were visible every direction on the horizon. The only downside was that it was even more bitterly cold than we had expected which made leaving your hands exposed to take photos rather unpleasant!

Thursday: Another nice dinner with friends of Mum & Dads, Dawn and Jim. Dawn was Mum’s host sister when she lived in Illinois for a year way back when (not that long ago really, but before my time so it seems like a whlie ago!). They took us to a nice diner on Union Square with delicious food and apparently a visit by some well known comedian at one point in the evening, although he was unknown to Kat and I!

Friday: Halloween. The city was mad with people of all ages, colours, shapes and sizes dressed in all manner of costumes. Sarah Palin (and family) seemed to be a particularly popular choice. We ventured out to the Halloween parade which travels up 6th street, and was therefore pretty close to us. It was an amazing display of costumes and a tribute to just how many people can be packed onto a street. After being jostled and squashed for an hour or two we retreated back to our room.

Saturday: Our last day together in New York, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and spent the late morning and afternoon exploring the leafy tree-lined streets of Brooklyn. We found a nice little cafe that served a very tasty Spanish omelette with outside tables where we could sit and people watch before heading off to the airport via the slowest subway train ever to deliver Kat to her flight back to Dublin.

If the tone of the writing hasn’t tipped you off by now, I was pretty impressed with most aspects of New York. The food, people and scenery were all as interesting as I remembered from my brief visit last year and the weather was pretty good too. While it was definitely no longer summer and we saw some rain, there was also plenty of sun and it was often too hot to walk around wearing a jacket. Should the circumstances present themselves (unlikely) I think I could happily live there for a while.

Kat’s safely back in Dublin now and I’m over in California (Mountain View) for another week and half of catching up with colleagues at the Google “head office”. I’ll be back in Dublin on the 13th of November, just in time for our 4th wedding anniversary. I’m looking forward to being back, as much as I enjoy traveling and seeing new sights, it’s never fun being away there is no bed like your own bed.

We do have lots of photos, and I will get them up eventually, but they’re all on my laptop with me in California at the moment, so you might have to be patient for another week or two, Sorry.

I’ve had 2 great days in New York so far. My flight arrived late and amid torrential rain and turbulence on Saturday night. By the time I got through immigration I was very tired and very very glad to see Matt waiting for me! Interestingly, I had trouble at immigration because they couldn’t get their system to match my fingerprints to the results they already had on their system from my last transit through LAX?! While the border control staff were all very friendly it was still a bit unnerving to have to go to the back office and wait for them to scrutinise my passport! So apparently I have difficult fingerprints… Who knew.

The weather was much improved by Sunday morning and we spent the day strolling through the different areas of Manhattan. As we walked through Chelsea and Greenwich Village I was very taken by the leafy tree lined streets and the gorgeous boutique stores and cafes. Definitely an area I could spend more time in! We also walked through Chinatown and visited Grand Central Station and Times Square. Tired feet by the end of the day!

Yesterday we spent some time in Central Park. It’s an amazing place, huge and sprawling. When you’re in the midst of it it’s hard to believe you’re still in the middle of New York! We walked around the lake, ate hot dogs, and Matt spent some time experimenting with his new camera lenses.

In the evening we headed back to Times Square. Since none of the Broadway shows we wanted to see were available we decided to go for the low budget option and see a movie instead at the AMC Empire 25 on Times Square. Times Square by night is pretty impressive. The mad kaleidoscope of colors from all the flashing signs and billboards provided Matt with more opportunity to practice using his SLR.

Today Matt is back at work and I’m working a half day too. The weather seems to have taken a turn for the worse so we might be putting off plans to go up the Empire State Building tonight… will have to see how it goes. We hope to have some photos up soon!

I had a great Birthday yesterday. It started with a phone call from New Zealand in the morning from Mum, Dad, Chris, Rachel, Andrew and Sarah, perfectly timed so that it didn’t get me out of bed and arrived just as I was about to leave the house for work. In the evening we had some friends around for a bit of a party, a few games and lots of delicious food that Kat cooked. White chocolate mud cake, chocolate brownie, ambrosia and ice cream. It’s a good thing birthdays only come once a year.

Kat gave me a nice new leather wallet to replace my existing one which has definitely seen better days. It came complete with tickets for a concert by a band I like in Dublin in February next year. She knows me well

• Birthday Photos

Having a birthday makes for a busy week, I just got around to sorting out all the photos from our weekend away in Belgium. Kat has already filled you in on most of the details. The main question I came away with was when and why the World Expos died out? they seem like they were pretty cool events. I whittled down the 277 photos we took between ourselves (we both carry a camera now!) to a reasonable 42 that should give you a taste for our experiences in Belgium.

• Belgium Photos

Last weekend we took a trip to Belgium, staying in Brussels and visiting nearby Bruges. As with any weekend trip it flew by too quickly and left us very tired by Monday morning. But we did have a great time away and really enjoyed visiting Bruges, sampling the local fare and snapping photos around the city.

A cheap and nasty Ryan Air flight plus a 1 hour coach ride plus a short metro trip got us into Brussels at midnight on Friday. We were very pleased to step into Hotel Bloom and relax. The funky decor and gorgeous comfy room were the perfect beginning to our weekend. Would definitely recommend Bloom to anyone traveling to Brussels!

We strolled Brussels on Saturday morning stopping by the Grand Place and the city’s signature statue ‘Mannekin Pis’. We were very surprised by the level of graffiti around some of the city and thought the litter problem there may just exceed that of Dublin! By lunch time we decided we’d like to take a train to Bruges as we’d heard great things about it and also recently seen the movie of the same name.

Bruges was only about an hour away and was really delightful to visit. While a bit touristy it was still very nice with its canals and old cobble stone paved streets. We ate frites in the central square and then climbed the 366 steps to the top of the Belfroi to look down on the town. It was a dizzying climb up the old spiral stairs but well worth it at the top. We got to hear the church bells ringing close up which was quite interesting.

No trip to Belgium would be complete without trying some Belgian beer so we searched out a bar with some space outdoors and sat by the canal for some pre-dinner drinks and enjoyed the quiet ambiance. I’m not a beer drinker at all but I tried the Framboise (Rasberry fruit beer) and found it quite nice. We ate at a lovely restaurant and were very pleased with the creme brulee for dessert!

On Sunday we took a Metro just out of the center to visit the Atomium, a giant monument building from the World Expo in 1958. Big and shiny it seemed a very modern design for something built 50 years ago. It has 9 steel spheres that you can walk between, connected in the shape of an iron crystal. Nice views of the city from the very top but the wait to go up there was very long.

After a very nice but slightly touristy lunch back in the center of Brussels we raced to catch our coach to the airport. As it turned out we needn’t have rushed ourselves as our flight ended up being delayed by 5 hours! Not the nicest finish to the weekend as we had to be held in the boarding area for several hours before being transported to Liege to fly out on a different plane.

Overall, a great weekend. Well worth the trip and I feel we got a good idea of the country and the culture even in the very short time we were there. Now that we’ve recovered from the busy weekend and the late arrival home its back into the swing of things. Matt’s birthday tomorrow and then Matt is off to New York on Sunday for 3 1/2 weeks of work in the US offices! Luckily I’ve been able to arrange to go over for 1 week in the middle of that so it’s not so long apart. I’m very excited about visiting the big apple for the first time!!! We’ll have more blog posts over the next few weeks to keep you posted on our travels.

xx Kat

After a week in sunny Malta we are both sporting a healthy glow - a slight improvement on the pale and pasty complexion we have been developing throughout the “Irish summer”. It was refreshing to take a week off and I feel quite rejuvenated after soaking in the sun for a week. It was also great to catch up with Mark and Gill. We met them for 1 week in Malta in the middle of their epic European adventure!  You can read more about their travels on their blog.

My first impression of Malta on arrival was that it felt overwhelmingly hot and humid and looked very old and dusty. On the drive from the airport we passed rustic Mediterranean-style houses lining densely packed streets in numerous small towns, the outline of Mdina’s walls and the cathedral dome were visible in the distance. It was easy to see Malta had a rich history and plenty waiting to be explored throughout the week.

Malta is a very compact country with any location reachable within about 30km of where we were staying in St Paul’s Bay. We hired a car and managed to sight-see a significant portion of Malta over our 7 days. Of course all sight-seeing took place at a leisurely pace, working around the sleeping in, eating out, siestas and swimming in the hotel pool!

A picture speaks a thousand words so I would suggest checking out some of the pictures from our trip in the gallery to give an overview of the week in more detail.

Day 1 (Sun 14th)
We visited Valletta, the capital of Malta. The city was quiet on a Sunday and I enjoyed wandering the narrow streets tightly packed with buildings displaying lots of variety in old balconies and shutters. Some buildings were in quite a state of decay but the streets as a whole had a lot of charm and character. Valletta is a fortified city on a peninsula with high walls built up around each side. The views were nice looking out from the city over the bay to the ‘Three Cities’ on the other side of the Grand Harbour.

Day 2 (Mon 15th)
We saw lots of beautiful boats today, some huge and expensive and others modest and traditional. We started our touring with a coffee stop at St Julians Bay. We saw some of the traditional Maltese fishing boats, very sweetly painted in bright red, blue, yellow green and brown. We continued on to Vittoriosa, one of the ‘Three Cities’ across the Grand Harbour from Valletta. There were many fine super yachts moored in the Grand Harbour, very impressive. After lunch we visited Marsaxlokk, a traditional fishing village with more of the brightly painted Luzzu and Dghajsa boats and a market selling laces and other wares.

Day 3 (Tue 16th)
We took the ferry to Gozo, the smaller of Malta’s two major islands and drove around the sights. Along the way we saw the remains of the Ggantija temples, built around 3600BC! We enjoyed views of the stunning blue sea at the Azure window, a very impressive natural rock formation. We also stopped in Victoria, the central city of Gozo and admired views from the citadel out to the sea on all sides.

Day 4 (Wed 17th)
We took a short boat trip today out to the Blue grotto, clear water reflecting brilliant blue in grottos along the base of the cliff. We went from there to Rabat and Mdina where we saw St Pauls catacombs and the fortified city of Mdina.

Day 5 (Thu 18th)
A quieter day with a bit of shopping in Sliema and then plenty of relaxing.

Day 6 (Fri 19th)
We spent our last full day on the beach at Golden Bay enjoying the sunshine. The sea was lovely to swim in, not too cold and very calm. I’m sure the sea in Malta is bluer than anywhere else I’ve been! After lunch Matt “won” a 7-day holiday which after listening to a timeshare sales-pitch turned out to be offered in the form of 1200 pounds of “discount” vouchers for package holidays and cruises, all of which must be booked before the end of the year. To use any of the vouchers you have to book much more expensive holidays. Essentially it’s all a scam, but was interesting to watch and hear the sales pitch none the less.

Day 7 (Sat 20th)
Up early to see off Mark and Gill at 7am, then a slower start for us to make our 1pm flight. Arrived back to a sunny Dublin afternoon around 4pm.

We had a great time in Malta with just the right mix of active sightseeing and relaxing. The islands are a pretty good size for a weeks holiday too, we had plenty to keep us occupied and saw most of the major attractions. I’m sure there are a still few more that we could have added to the list given another day or two in the sun though.

Back to work for us on Monday, but hope is in sight as we’ve already got a weekend trip to Brussels planned for early October and we’re going to Scotland for New Years (Hogamany) in Edinburgh, so you needn’t feel too sorry for us yet.

• Don’t forget to view our photos from Malta!

Phew, we had an eleventh hour crisis tonight as we began packing for Malta. With the suitcases nearly full and all in order I went to get our passports from the file in our drawer. One passport was found - mine, one passport was missing - Matt’s.

We searched the drawer, we searched Matt’s desk, with increasing urgency we searched every inch of the apartment!!! The passport remained missing.

We searched under couches, in kitchen cupboards and behind shelves. Nothing. By this stage we were almost resigned to spending our planned holiday in a NZ embassy instead of Malta.

Matt was about to leave for the office to check his desk there when I asked if he had needed the passport on our weekend road trip around Ireland last month. Yes! He had. Not optimistic that the car rental office would be open at this hour or that they would have seen the passport at all Matt decided to call anyway. What did we really have to lose!?

Imagine our relief when Matt got through to the car rental company and they told him they did have the passport! Yes!

I can’t imagine how we managed to lose such an important document or how we both failed to notice it was missing for so long. I’m just so incredibly thankful that we managed to track it down and will still be going to Malta tomorrow morning as planned. I’m certain we’ll both be keeping a firmer grip on our passports tomorrow.