Matt and Kat Brown

Things are rather quiet here in Dublin at the moment. I made banana cake on the weekend, a maintenance guy came to repaint the bathroom ceiling today, I had a bagel for lunch… not too much to report really.

Of course it may seem quieter than normal right now because Matt is in San Francisco for work this week and next!

Nevertheless, there is still news to write about! Two weekends ago we were in the UK on a bank holiday road trip. We posted photos (1), (2) & (3) when we got back but now here’s a run down of what we got up to…

We flew into London Stansted at lunchtime on Saturday and drove a rental car to Oxford. We managed to find a lot of slow outer-London traffic on the motorways but eventually made it to Oxford late in the afternoon. We wandered around the town center admiring the old college buildings. Oxford really seems like a lovely place – gorgeous old architecture but also with the buzz of a student town and lots of nice looking cafes and bars around. We decided to see an outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that evening which we both really enjoyed. There were some great comedic performances from the cast and it was very cool to see Shakepeare performed in a small, relaxed, outdoor arena. Perfect thing to do on a summer evening in Oxford!

On Sunday we left Oxford and drove down towards Bath with a detour to Stonehenge on the way. Stonehenge was a little disappointing – interesting enough but kind of expensive to see, not as big as I imagined it and surrounded by a throng of tourists. Anyway, we went, we saw, we crossed it off our list.

We spent the afternoon exploring Bath. We walked around the town for a while before making our way to the Roman Baths – the central attraction of the town. Bath is built on a thermal hot water source. Back in the day, the Romans built the impressive Bath houses here so people could come an enjoy the restorative waters.  Quite picturesque and interesting to see the remains of the whole series of pools that used to be in use there.

I was impressed with the food in Bath. At lunch we had some amazing woodfired pizzabread topped with pesto, garlic oil and chopped tomatoes. Then for dinner we ate at a restaurant called Gascoyne Place where I had beautifully cooked lamb with roasted vegetables and tomato pesto finished off with an apple and cinnamon crème brûlée for dessert. Making anyone hungry? hehe

Our Monday our plans fell apart on us. We intended to see the Banksy exhibit at the Bristol Museum but we’d somewhat underestimated the queues and when we got to Bristol mid-morning the wait time was about 2 1/2 hours. We decided to give it a miss! It was probably a good choice because Matt ended up feeling progressively worse as the day wore on and ended up with a flu that he spent the next week recovering from! We headed back past Oxford and to Luton airport to catch our flight home later in the evening.

Apart from a disappointing Bristol and the beginnings of a flu on Monday we had a really fun weekend.

We finally had time to sit down and sort through the 600 or so photos we generated over the past week. For your viewing pleasure we’ve cut them down to the following highlights:

• Zurich and surrounds (Winterthur, Rapperswil) – ignore the first 10 winter photos, they’re from an earlier Zurich trip!
• The Rhine Falls – one of our day trips out of Zurich, it deserved a gallery all of its own.
• U2 360degree tour in Dublin – We saw U2 in Croke Park, Dublin on Monday night, Awesome concert.
• Car on Fire – A Mercedes parked behind our house "burst" into flames at 4:30am on Wed morning, providing some uneeded excitement!

We’re off to the UK this (long) weekend, so expect to see some photos of Stonehenge and the Banksy exhibit from Bristol Museum next week.

Last week in Zurich was nice and relaxing. I enjoyed sleeping in and spending afternoons visiting different places in the city. I visited a Museum of Design one day and the Zurich zoo on another. I wandered around the old city and browsed the shops a lot.

Zurich seemed very orderly and very expensive. The people there were generally quite reserved. Nobody smiled on the tram and most people are quite unwilling to speak English. Despite this the city is nice to explore because everything is so clean and organised with great tram, train and boat services. The city really runs like clockwork.

I was able to meet Matt at the Google offices for dinner a couple of nights and I enjoyed getting the grand tour. Pictures of the Zurich offices have been much discussed and puzzled over online ever since the makeover last year. It was cool to see each of the zany ideas in reality. My favorite part was lying in a bathtub filled with foam and watching the fishes in the fish tank. A bit surreal really.

I wasn’t allowed to take any photos Mum, but I can tell you I did try out the twisty metal slide that goes down to the cafeteria and it was somewhat embarrassing

On the Saturday before we left we took a boat down the lake to a town called Rapperswil. The slow cruise gave us good views of the houses and vine yards along the lakeside, very pretty. We walked around Rapperswil a bit and then met some of Matt’s colleagues in the afternoon for a UK beer and cheese tasting event! It was a little ironic to be ordering a stout and a wedge of wensleydale while in Switzerland but it was an enjoyable afternoon and evening with good company and tasty food.

Early on Sunday we headed off to the airport. We shed all our remaining swiss francs at the airport plus a wee bit more when we stocked up on toblerone, lindt and some luxemburgerli yum yum!!!

The only thing I didn’t do while in Switzerland which I still want to try is a  fondue dinner. Warm summer evenings are not well suited to meals of melted cheese so I think we’ll have to plan a return visit to Zurich in winter when the city is cold and snowy.

We’re in Zurich this week, I’m here for work and Kat managed to get a week off work to relax and join me which certainly makes my traveling for work much more enjoyable.

We arrived yesterday (Saturday) in the late afternoon and found our hotel/apartment with no problems. After settling in I took Kat on a quick tour of the central city / lake area which I’d sort of explored on a previous visit last year. Our first impression, at around 6pm on a Saturday was how quiet and sparsely populated many of the streets in the center of town were, all the shops were closed and there weren’t really that many people around even at the lake front. We had dinner at a nice “Gratin” restaurant near the central train station, delicious food.

Today (Sunday) we took the train northwest out of Zurich to the town of Winterthur, Switzerland’s 6th largest city apparently. The town itself was absolutely deserted and quiet by normal standards, Sunday in Switzerland is definitely not a day for shopping or anything that requires interaction with a store of any kind. Luckily for us, the object of our visit was the Swiss Photomuseum which is open on a Sunday and we spent an enjoyable hour or two browsing an exhibition of Walker Evans’ work along with a couple of other exhibitions.

After a quick lunch at an Italian restaurant (delicious pizza baked in front of us) we hopped on another train, (Switzerland’s public transport is awesome, if a little pricey), and journeyed a bit further north to the Rhine Falls which are apparently the largest in Europe. They were impressive, but if that’s the best Europe has to offer it’s doing pretty badly. Huka Falls are at least competitive with the Rhine Falls in my opinion. We took a bunch of photos, and a boat ride to a rock right in the middle of the falls where we could see the water cascading down on either side and feel the spray making us and my camera somewhat wet…

We eventually headed back to the train via a nice riverside walk and returned to Zurich via a round-about route via some small rural train stations that a friendly ticket seller in Winterthur had arranged for us to minimise the cost of our overall trip!

I’m off to work tomorrow and Kat has a week of shopping (window only I hope) and relaxing planned for herself.

This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).

It’s been a while since I’ve taken any sort of quiz like this, so when David Farrar from Kiwblog posted his results today it prompted me to give it another go.

My Political Views
I am a center-right moderate social libertarian
Right: 1.33, Libertarian: 1.97

Political Spectrum Quiz

I completed the quiz pretty quickly and felt the need to answer ‘it depends on the specifics’ to many of the questions, so take the results with a grain of salt. I think it is a reasonably accurate description of me though.

If you feel the need to comment, head over to the original post on Matt’s Musings.

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.

Thursday morning saw us make an early start from Avignon as we tried to fit in a quick trip to Carcassonne to see the walled city that one of our favourite board games is named after before catching our train to Barcelona from Montpellier in the early afternoon, a total of roughly 400km of driving. Thanks to the French motorway system and the generous 130km/h speed limit we managed this in just under 4 hours which gave us just enough time for a quick visit and a few photos in Carcassonne itself!

The old city of Carcassone sits high on a hill looking out over the surrounding valleys and the walls and fortifications have been immaculately preserved. The scale is impressive and you have to wonder how any attacking army would have thought they had a chance of breaching the multiple layers of walls and moat/cliffs surrounding them. These days the inside of the fortified city is full of little tourist shops and stalls, the modern day city of Carcassonne is spread around the base of the hill. Our visit was brief but we enjoyed the views, especially as we could see some snow covered alps to the south which made a nice contrast the the warm environment and surroundings of Carcassonne.

The train from Montpellier to Barcelona was fairly old and rickety, but it went slow enough that we had plenty of time to admire the coast line and scenery that we passed through. We arrived into Barcelona early in the evening and checked into the hostel. Before we arrived in Barcelona we’d been told many times to watch for pick pockets and the staff at the hostel repeated this warning in a fairly dire tone, almost like it was inevitable that we would fall victim. Despite that we never saw any sign of trouble, even in the crowded subways or walking Las Ramblas after midnight, but we were definitely watching over our shoulders constantly. While I’m sure the problem exists, I have to wonder if it is over-hyped, it would have been nice to wander through the city without having pickpocketing constantly on the mind!

We spent most of Friday exploring the Gaudi parts of the city, starting at the Sagrada Familia and continuing on to the Park Guell in the afternoon. The Sagrada Familia was definitely a highlight, possibly of the entire holiday. The building is amazing, both in design and construction but also for the fact that it has been under construction since 1882 and is nowhere near finished yet! The style and shape is like nothing you’ve seen before. We took a tour through the inside of the church which is currently a builders workshop where you watch the workers crafting the custom mouldings and pieces of the church. It is scheduled to open as an actual church sometime in 2010. Park Guell continued the Gaudi theme with lots of spiral styled pillars and mosaics. For a single artist/architect Gaudi has left a very distinct mark on Barcelona.

On Friday evening we tried to visit the Font Monjuic on Monjuic mountain, an impressive fountain lit by a multitude of lights that performs in time with music every evening. Unfortunately the fountain turns out to also be in the middle of the Barcelona convention centre area where there was some sort of auto show on. Toyota had taken the opportunity to exclude the public from the area and put up giant inflatable tents that obscured most views of the fountain. A sad end to the day, but we tried to make the best of it by climbing to the top of the mountain to watch the sun set over the city. We dined Spanish style around 10pm at a delicious Tapas restaurant near to our hostel. Needless to say that every meal we had in Barcelona was delightful and ridiculously cheap (compared to Dublin standards) too!

By Saturday, the last day of the holiday, our feet were getting pretty tired of walking and exploring so we spent most of the day exploring Barcelona’s beautiful leafy parks and testing the park benches. Barcelona really is a beautiful city with lots of green spaces and plenty of families and friends out enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

Barcelona was definitely my favourite city of all the places we visited, followed closely by Aix-en-Provence. As lucky as we are to have been able to spend 8 days in such a wonderful part of the world, I can’t help but think that we need to spend much more time there to really get a feel for the place and pick up some more of the language and culture. If only Google had an engineering office in Barcelona…

Photos from the last portion of the trip are in the gallery as per usual:

• Carcassonne
• Barcelona

As we turned inland from the French Riviera the landscape changed to old farm houses and fields of grapevines and olive trees – our first taste of Provence. We stopped briefly in Aix-en-Provence which I found very charming. The whole town seemed to be roofed with sycamore/plane trees – very pretty. Lynley and I enjoyed strolling through the market there and found some nice locally made soaps to buy. We had our first introduction here to the ‘Mistral’ which is a very strong dry wind that characterises winter and spring in Provence.

We reached Avignon in the evening and looped around the outside of the city before parking and walking in through the city gates. What makes Avignon unique is the solid castle-style walls which encircle the city – very cool. Lynley showed us the very sweet little building where she lives, complete with green wooden door and shutters and we then walked into the center for a quick dinner.

We spent the next day in Avignon. We saw the university where Lynley studies and assists and we also toured the school where she teaches English. We then browsed through a lovely indoor market and picked out bread, olives, cheese and strawberries for lunch. I would love to have so much variety of fresh, cheap, local food in Dublin! We took our purchases to the Popes Palace gardens and relaxed in the sun there with our picnic.

After lunch we went into the Palais des Papes. The Palace was the temporary residence of the Popes in the 1300’s and features many grand halls and rooms. The palace is mostly empty and unadorned these days but must have once been very ornate and overwhelming. After leaving the Palace we took a free ferry across the river for a nice view back to the city walls, the Palace and the Pont d’Avignon. After visiting Avignon its easy for me to see why Lynley loves it there so much!

On Wednesday we drove out from Avignon to Arles and the Camargue. In Arles we saw Roman ruins including the remains of an amphitheatre and other buildings. From Arles we headed down to the Camargue which is a different landscape to the rest of Provence. The area is flat and marshy with flamingos and other birds as well as distinctive black bulls and white horses. At the bottom of the Camargue we stopped at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and spent the afternoon at the beach. We enjoyed the sandy beach, went swimming and tolerated the wind which quickly covered everything in copious amounts of sand. The afternoon was topped off with icecreams and a big punnet of strawberries by the beach. Yum!

On the drive back to Avignon we also stopped in at Les Baux which is a very small medieval village nestled high in the rocky hillside. It was very sweet and had gorgeous views out over the area. We ate dinner in St-Remy which is another charming small village in Provence. Back in Avignon we said goodbye to Lynley. It was fun to holiday with her and I’m looking forward to showing her around Dublin later in June when she comes to see us

The photos from this leg of the journey are available under the Provence tag in our gallery.

Thursday we left Avignon early and drove south west to visit Carcassonne before catching our train to Barcelona…

We came home with over 600 photos between our two cameras and spent a good few hours today sifting through them and writing some captions.

The first installment can be found via the link below:

• Photos from Nice, Monaco and the Cote d’Azur

More to come in the following days as we find some more time to edit and caption the rest.

We got back last night from a fabulous week away in France and Spain. We visited some gorgeous places, oohing at the stunning vistas and ahhing over the charming buildings and places. I’m feeling very relaxed and content after a week of good food and wine, warm sun and no work!

Part One – Côte d’Azur

Our holiday started on Saturday with a 6am flight to Nice (thanks to Kieron for the ridiculously early airport drop!) which placed us on the Côte d’Azur by lunchtime. We met up with Lynley who arrived by train from Avignon and together we spent the afternoon exploring. The center of Nice is impressive to walk around with cool fountains, big open spaces and the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais. We spent the late afternoon basking in the sun on the beach. The beaches in Nice are all rocks rather than sand and the water in early summer is still very cold for swimming. Despite that it was still great to relax on the beach for a while. We ate dinner in a restaurant called ‘Le Maori’ which featured a ‘Maori burger’ with egg in it and also an ‘All Black’ dessert. Hilarious.

On our second day of holidays we decided to take a day trip along the coast to Monaco. After a false start taking the train (unexplained problems with the rail lines) we managed to catch a bus to Monaco in time for lunch. We stopped in at Monte Carlo, saw the casino and the beautiful views out over the sea. Monaco seemed to be a country of expensive cars, designer stores and luxury yachts. Well out of our league but still cool to visit. From the casino we walked down to Monte Carlo beach which was packed with vacationers. We ate gelato and people-watched for a while before taking the bus back to Nice. Tired feet and red shoulders and faces after our second day of sunny sight-seeing.

Our third day we checked out of Nice and took a hire car along the coast. Matt had the task of driving and did a pretty good job of adjusting to driving on the right (wrong) side of the road.  Our first stop of the day was in Cannes. We were there a week too early for the famous film festival but we did get to see all the tents and pavilions being set up in preparation and we walked on the red carpet hehe. Cannes was not a glam as I’d expected with much of the town feeling a bit ‘past its prime’. Like most of the Côte d’Azur the beach here was lined with deck chairs and divided up into sections by all of the restaurants and hotels planted right on the beach-front. So different from being at the beach in NZ, I would take a nice unspoilt stretch of the Coromandel over the French Riviera any day!

From Cannes we drove the winding coastal road along to St Raphael. Some stunning views along this drive – charming houses dotted along the cliffs and gorgeous blue sea stretching out to the horizon. Unfortunately by the time we reached St Raphael the sky had turned grey so we turned inland and plotted our course to Avignon via Aix-en-Provence…