Matt and Kat Brown

Happy Easter everyone. I hope your long weekend was well-stocked with chocolate goodies, plenty of relax time and some quiet moments to reflect on the reason behind the holiday.

Matt and I spent this Easter visiting Donegal, in the north-west of Ireland. It was great to get out of the city, see some beautiful natural landscapes and breath in the fresh country air. We stayed at Coxtown Manor near Donegal town, a charming place nestled in the country amid spring daffodils and frolicking lambs. It felt very much like spring in Donegal except for the bone-chilling wind and the tell-tale frosting that remains on the tops of the hills. Like the rest of Ireland, the warmer weather has yet to hit Donegal. Nevertheless, we had a great time driving around the area and were impressed with the landscapes – white sand beaches, mountains and valleys, lakes and cliffs.

On the way to Donegal we stopped at Bundoran beach which was stunning. If it had only been warmer it would have been very inviting to linger awhile, walk along the stretches of white sand and dip my toes in the surf. Instead we took some pictures from above the beach, marveled at the dedicated surfers down below and then headed on our way.

On Sunday we drove along the coast from Donegal. The first stop was Killybegs, a small town with a big fishing port. I was amused to note that the tourist brochure boasts that Killybegs is a “gourmet capital of the northwest” now with a staggering total of 9 restaurants catering to all tastes including Irish, Chinese and Italian! We didn’t eat there so I can’t say for sure if the claims are justified. I can however say the food in Donegal town was decidedly average so it’s quite possible Killybegs does indeed stand out as a gourmet capital by comparison

From Killybegs we continued along the coast taking some very rural winding roads to get to the Slieve League cliffs. These are Europe’s 6th largest cliffs. The walk to the cliffs offered some beautiful views over the ocean and across the rocky hills and outcrops. From here we drove onwards to Glencolmcille, up to Adara and then back to Donegal over the Bluestack Mountains.

On Monday after a quiet morning enjoying the rural aspect and our cozy country room at Coxtown Manor we headed homewards. Coming home after a trip away is always sad but at least we have a short week ahead now! For myself, this means only 4 days left at my web design job with iQuate. With mixed sadness and excitement I’ll be moving on very soon to something new. Exactly what I’ll be moving on to once we get back from Mountain View in June is as yet undecided but I’m looking forward to new opportunities and challenges…

Photos of our weekend in Donegal:

Ever since we booked our cruise holiday in January I’ve been eagerly awaiting May 29th, excited to flee the grey cold weather of Dublin and cruise the Caribbean in style with our fabulous friends Kieron, Lucy, Joey and Robbie.

There was so much packed into our holiday last week that I don’t know where to begin in describing it. Lets just say it was 9 days of fabulousness! Memories of our tropical sunny holiday will keep me warm through the Irish ’summer’

We arrived in Miami on the afternoon of Friday 29th. We spent that evening soaking in the ambiance of South Beach, people-watching and sipping cocktails. On Saturday we boarded the ‘Liberty of the Seas’ and settled into our home for the week. Sunday we cruised towards Haiti and Monday we relaxed on the private beach of Labadee. Tuesday we rafted down a jungle river in Jamaica. Wednesday we snorkeled and swum with stingrays in Grand Cayman. Thursday we snorkeled in Mexico and Friday we cruised back towards Miami and bid a grudging farewell to the Caribbean.  On Saturday we left the ship early and managed to squeeze in some speed-shopping at Aventura in Miami before our flight home.

That is our holiday in brief. I can’t really do justice to all that we saw and did or to the fun times we had but here are a few memories in no particular order :

• The Liberty of the Seas – The cruise ship itself was truly impressive. Like a small city floating around the Caribbean. Liberty of the Seas is complete with mini-golf, movie theatre, ice skating rink, climbing wall, shops and restaurants, water desalination plant, tv production studio, you name it!
• Swimming in the sea – The water was so clear and calm. I’ve never swum in such warm ocean before! I’m quite a wimp when it comes to even slightly cold water but the sea in the Caribbean is perfect, like swimming in bathwater! The blue sky and the brilliant blues and greens of the water are beautiful. Sigh. Perfection.
• Stingrays – in Grand Cayman we took a tour out to Stingray bay, a sand bar where huge stingrays will swim around you and let you hold them! It was scary stepping into the clear blue water and seeing the black shapes gliding around under the surface. It freaked me out completely to feel the stingrays brushing past my legs as they swam between us. But it was fun haha
• Formal Dress – I loved dressing up for the 2 formal nights on the boat. We girls got to glam it up in our cocktail dresses and the boys held up their side too looking very dashing in their tuxedos.
• Shopping – Well, this is more of a highlight for me than for Matt but I had a great time shopping with Lucy and Robbie in Miami. Forever 21 is my new favourite store. If only they would open a store a little closer to here…
• Sunsets – We saw some gorgeous sunsets while on holiday. The first one in Miami and then a few nights onbaord the ship. I love how a sunset never looks exactly the same as the night before.
• The little things – It was the small things that made the cruise feel luxurious, like the origami towel animals left on our bed each night by the room attendant and the attentive waiters at dinner each night who placed your napkin on your lap and brushed the crumbs off the table before dessert with their little table combs hehe.
• Food – The food, oh my, the food. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much in one week. A cruise holiday is all inclusive meaning you can eat all you want and it doesn’t cost you anything more… Expansive breakfast buffets, all day snacks and 3 course dinners. We took full advantage of all of it mmmm yum! The calories don’t count when you’re on holiday don’t ya know
• Lightning storm – On our last night on board the weather turned dark and stormy. We looked out to sea and watched the storm.  It was awesome to see the bolts of lightning flash across the night sky.
• Fabulous Friends – Holidays are infinitely better when you have good company to enjoy them with!!! Thanks for the amazing holiday guys

Check out all the holiday photos in our gallery here.

4 short days until Easter starts. We’re staying in Ireland with Daniel and Susanna coming over from London for the weekend. We’re looking forward to catching up and spending some time showing them around our adopted home city.

To get into the spirit of things I whipped up a batch of hot cross buns this afternoon.

They looked pretty good and tasted nice too.

It’s been a tough Monday getting back into the swing of things after our weekend away. Truthfully I’d much prefer to have spent my Monday relaxing in a piazza in Florence, sipping wine and eating antipasto.

We flew into Pisa airport late on Friday and on Saturday we spent the day in Pisa. In the morning we went looking for some geo-caches, before most of the town had woken up. We wandered through the old town and eventually ended up where all tourists in Pisa end up – at the Leaning Tower. Yes it does lean, quite a lot actually. We laughed at all the funny contortions of tourists as they took cheesy photos pretending to hold up / kick down the tower, and then we took some cheesy pics of our own

We spent the remainder of the day exploring the main street, doing a spot of shopping and eating some gelato – yum! Meals were an adventure as neither of us know any Italian.  It was worth the effort to venture out of the tourist area to eat, we made a point of going to a place without an ‘English’ menu for dinner. Ordering was hit and miss but overall led to some good food.

Feeling that we’d exhausted all Pisa could offer us on Saturday we decided to take the train to Firenze (Florence) on Sunday. It was a good day to be on the train as it rained heavily for a lot of the day. From what we saw of Florence in between downpours it seemed like a beautiful city. Looking out over the river Arno and walking over the Ponte Vecchio was a highlight for me.

We took the train back to Pisa in the afternoon ready to catch our flight home. Photos from the weekend are in our gallery.

Over the weekend I found the slow, relaxed pace of life a little… frustrating.  Shops not open when I wanted them to be and restaurants still empty at 8pm when we wanted to eat.   A two day visit isn’t really enough time to settle into the ‘go slow’ that would make Tuscany so appealing on a longer more relaxing vacation.  I’m happy with the small taste we had but can definitely see potential for a long lazy holiday there in the future – sipping wine and reading a good book, soaking in the ambiance… bellissimo!

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.

Several weeks ago Craig shared his omlette making skills.

Kat came home after doing the shopping today with all the ingredients needed for an omelette so I decided that it was time to see if my omelette making skills are up to scratch.

It tasted pretty good to me, and I performed the flip while the egg was still quite liquid which helped to bind the ingredients together.

I’d give it about an 8/10 on the omelette scale. Click on a photo above to go to the gallery and see a few more.

My favourite omelettes contain chunks of potato, but that was too much effort for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Hi all, I hope you have all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to 2008! We’ve both been off work since Christmas day and relaxing at home. After our various travels in November and December it’s been nice to just have some time at home. We’ve been sleeping in lots, playing board games and working on hobbies.

We went out to dinner tonight to ‘Kudos’ – the restaurant at the Clarion hotel near our apartment. They had a nice ‘asian fusion’ menu. The food was tasty but they were on a ‘Christmas menu’ which I think actually means a ‘we have restricted staff and food supplies till the new year’ menu.

I was amused to find that they served fortune cookies at the end of the meal. Matt was not amused when he cracked open his cookie and found this message:

“Behind every successful man lurks a truly amazed woman.” I got a good laugh from this – very wise for a fortune cookie I think!

Phew! It’s the weekend at last. After getting back from Paris at midnight on Tuesday we were straight back into work on Wednesday and playing catch-up for the time we were away. Now that it’s Saturday – the chores all done and cosy inside looking out at the drizzly grey Dublin day – I have time to sit back and think over our trip to Paris and finish writing about it. So, here we are….

Day 3 in Paris we decided to take to the Seine river for a different view of Paris. We took the Batobus which is a boat that runs daily up and down the Seine stopping at various points where you can hop on and off as you wish. We were fortunate to get a beautiful sunny day on Monday and it was very pleasant cruising the river and watching Paris glide by.

We stopped off at the Musee d’Orsay hoping to visit there and see some more art – unfortunately the Musee d’Orsay is closed on a Monday We settled for finding a local Patisserie and nibbling on chausson aux pommes (also known as apple turnovers to us English speakers). It was quite funny ordering food and generally using French in any situation – neither of us really speak any French and I’m sure we managed to butcher the names of lots of different places and foods! I had an idea that Parisians would be unhelpful or disapproving if we couldn’t speak French but I was surprised and grateful to find that people were accommodating of our poor French and would speak English to us without a problem.

Another misconception of mine before we arrived was that Paris is a dirty city. I found this to be very untrue. Perhaps it appears that way because Paris has recently hosted an international sporting event and had the street sweepers on overtime? or perhaps it appears that way to us because Dublin really is a very dirty city. Whatever the reason, we saw very little litter, no dog poop and nobody blowing smoke in your face as they walk along the street… by comparison to Dublin, Paris was squeaky clean!

We hopped back on the Batobus and cruised to the Ile de la Cite which is one of two small islands in the middle of the Seine. The Ile de la Cite is historically the center of Paris, the home of Notre Dame Cathedral and now where the Paris Police and the Courts are based. We visited Notre Dame – a very ornate building and interesting to walk through. We also visited Sainte-Chapelle which is a less famous church but no less stunning. Ste-Chapelle was built for Louis IX to hold ‘the relics of Christ’s Passion’ (i.e the crown of thorns). It has towering stained glass window panels covering all walls that depict different sections of the biblical story from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. Very beautiful in the midday sun!

We went out in the evening in search of an authentic French restaurant to celebrate with an anniversary dinner. We had a very nice meal which included french onion soup, steak (not blue), and creme brulee. Yum yum.

On Tuesday we started the day by walking to the Arc de Triomphe. We made our way up the 284 steps of the spiral staircase to the top for a great view of the city. From the top it feels as if you are in the very center of the city with 12 avenues branching out from the roundabout that the Arc sits in the center of. Watching the chaos on the roundabout below was quite interesting. Parisian drivers are not afraid to use their horns!

Tuesday afternoon we headed back to the Musee d’Orsay. We found it open and busy but didn’t have to wait too long as the queues were moving fast. We were pleased to find that we qualified for the youth rates (18 to 25yrs)! This almost made up for being ripped off earlier in the morning by being charged 12 euro for two hot chocolates at a cafe on the Champs Elysees. The Musee d’Orsay was great. Highlights for me were seeing collections by Van Gogh, Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec – some of my favourite artists! While not as big as the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay still proved to fill a good few hours. We left with weary feet at about 4:00 and spent a few hours relaxing before we needed to head to the airport for our flight home.

Our trip to Paris was great. We enjoyed every day and would definitely go back some time.

Matt is coding some changes to the photo gallery application that we use. Hopefully you should soon see the newest photos and also a few changes to the way the gallery looks. Please feel free to leave some comments and let us know what you think once it’s all up to date. Adieu!

On Sunday I found myself basking in a sunny afternoon, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn by men in top hats and tails. As you might guess, we were not in Dublin anymore. We were in Cambridge, England for the wedding of Sam and Zoe Jansen (Sam is a friend of Matt’s from Waikato Uni). It was a fun weekend, really great to be able to attend the wedding and to catch up with some Kiwis over here.

We arrived in Cambridge at lunchtime on Saturday and spent the afternoon walking around Cambridge and taking in the some of the local sights. Cambridge University is comprised of many individual Colleges scattered throughout the town. Many of the colleges have very old, grand buildings on grounds with carefully manicured gardens and lawns that you have to keep off. We walked through Saint Johns College and oohed and aahed at the stained glass, arched doorways and columns throughout (pictures in the gallery).

We stayed at the ‘Home from Home B & B’ in Cambridge which was a good, affordably-priced, place to stay. It was reasonably central and had nice rooms. Would recommend to anyone visiting Cambridge in the future.

We also enjoyed watching the punting on the river which seems to be a very popular pass time in Cambridge with tourists and locals. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to go punting ourselves but it looked like a lot of fun. With so many punts on the river most of the time is spent trying to navigate around others without knocking anyone in!

We spent Saturday evening catching up with other kiwis who had come over for the wedding. The wedding was on Sunday at Downing College. Sam and Zoe had a wonderful wedding, the ceremony was lovely, the bride looked beautiful, and the whole day was very special.

The ceremony was at 1:00, after which there was champagne and canapes in the garden and a spot of croquet for those who were keen. It turns out Croquet is not the genteel British game it appears on the surface! Yes, once the real rules of the game were established people seemed to take great glee in knocking everyone else off course and more or less forgot about getting themselves through the course All good fun really.

Later in the afternoon we moved inside again for the ‘Wedding breakfast’ or reception as we would call it in NZ. We were all spoiled with a full five course dinner which was followed by some entertaining speeches and then a live band and dancing into the night. Everyone had a great day.

On Monday we headed back from Cambridge to Stansted Airport for our flight. We got to Stansted with what should have been plenty of time but due to the huge lines going through security we literally had to run through the terminal to catch our flight. We made it, luckily but will know in future to allow a lot longer than the minimum time to check in!

One of the things I enjoy when coming back to Malaysia is the food. There are lots of things that I only eat on a trip back to Malaysia and many that you just don’t get in New Zealand or most other places in the world. I enjoy things like tropical fruit, satay, red bean desserts, little layer cakes and bbq pork buns… mmmm yum.

There are more tropical fruits here in Malaysia than I can count. Some are fairly well known like pineapple or papaya but others are completely foreign to the average Kiwi. Dragon fruit, lycees, jack fruit, innumerable other wild fruits straight from the forest. I love them all except for the Durian which smells of rotten eggs and tastes just as bad (in my opinion).

One thing that has been particularly fun on this trip to Malaysia is introducing all the weird and wonderful foods to Matt. I can happily report to all those in doubt that Matt has been willing to try almost anything he is offered here. Matt has put on a brave face for many meals of beancurd, seaweed, mushroom and fungus while we’ve been here and has become quite good with a pair of chopsticks!