Matt and Kat Brown

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